XXXI

A wilderness of flowers around us lying,
Tangling our steps, the hidden pathway throng,
Vines twine o'er latticed shades, and myrtles sighing,
As the wind wakes their branches into song,
Heaven's cloudless azure the bright days prolong;
Glassing the hyaline, the deep serene,
Heard far below responds her solemn tongue;
Life here is Eros that has ever been,
The skeleton Death forgot, the shadow Time unseen.

XXXII

Upon a mossy stone I sate me down,
And thought of living Cuma in her pride;
She of the oracles of old renown;
I mused on all the infinite life that plied
Through buried strects where now the worms abide;
Sages, or seers, the good, the great, the just;
Heroes for god-like actions deified,
Whose names are vanished — record, fame, and bust;
Of beauty's heavenly form, all turned alike to dust!

XXXIII

I would have mourned, my bosom sought relief,
My heart yearned sadly toward my human kind;
But nature's self forbad the unnatural grief;
The sun looked down reproof, and in the wind
I heard a spirit bid me be resigned.
Was not the crowning blessing, life, allowed,
The infinite dominion of the mind?
Low to the monitory Voice I bowed,
And walked rejoicing on, my gratitude avowed.

XXXIV

Yet pause on yonder odour-breathing hill;
When offering Jove the steerage of his wings,
The tale of Daedalus instructs us still.
Beauty breathes o'er those old imaginings
Of golden faith, and round them fancy flings
Her brightest hues, unfolding to the mind
Where flower-like truth from hidden fable springs.
Here the sad father in his grief designed
The story of his son in rash presumption blind.

XXXV

Thrice he assayed, and thrice the sire confessed
The o'er-mastering power of nature as he failed;
Owns not the moral the responsive breast?
On soaring wisdom the restraint entailed,
Whose erring aspiration heaven assailed,
To leave the baser herd behind, to prove,
Though mortal weakness in the flight prevailed,
Its immortality, that vainly strove
To escape from earthlier bonds, and sphere itself above?

XXXVI

Along that wild and lone, and wave-worn strand,
Where stood Liternum, gleams a ruined tower.
How doth a glory round that wreck expand!
Time may to dust the crumbling fabric lower,
Yet shall the spot o'er answering minds hold power;
The vanquisher of Hannibal, the sword
Of Rome, there wasted out life's blighted hour,
Exiled, and feared, and hated; the reward
Dealt by mankind to those their freeman's rights who guard.

XXXVII

Descend that desolate yet lovely shore;
The hill, the crag, the pebbled ridge the same;
The waves break round thee with the same deep roar
As when beside them S CIPIO 's heart of flame
Glowed with his wrongs and envy-tainted name.
Perchance the enduring forms around confessed
Showed him the nothingness of earthly fame;
That divine nature entering his breast,
Soothed, till it hushed at last ambition's self to rest.

XXXVIII

But vainly may the tutored soul essay
The discipline of an unnatural mood
Of self-endurance; stern resolve gives way;
Pride lowered, and sense of conscious worth subdued,
Rise, ever struggling into birth renewed;
Time, life, nor habit heals the wound that pained,
The cankering poison of ingratitude;
Still in his mighty heart the pang remained,
He, who beyond the grave, indignant wrath retained.

XXXIX

Lo, amidst Capri's shivered peaks enshrined,
Wrecks of fall'n grandeur, arch and column lie;
Where, throned in isolation from his kind,
Tiberius veiled his life in mystery,
And strove to bury from the common eye
Deeds blazoned forth; the hoary eremite
Who rent the ties of his humanity;
Here the grey slave of worn-out appetite
Revelled in crimes that hid their orgies from the light.

XL

Cold as its cliffs, and inaccessible
To sympathies, one passion for its mate
Chose that dark bosom in its secret cell;
With power, fame, lust, ambition satiate,
All save the appetite of quenchless hate
Towards his kind, that grew on what it fed;
That deadened heart one feeling could elate, —
To inspire within his living victims dread:
To hold back tortured life, ere 'scaping to the dead.