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If Hope's familiar whispers merit faith,

Await my steps when they the breezy height
Shall range of philosophic Tusculum ;

Or Sabine vales explored inspire a wish
To meet the shade of Horace by the side
Of his Blandusian fount; or I invoke
His presence to point out the spot where once
He sat, and eulogized with earnest pen
Peace, leisure, freedom, moderate desires ;
And all the immunities of rural life

Extolled, behind Vacuna's crumbling fane.
Or let me loiter, soothed with what is given,
Nor asking more, on that delicious Bay,
Parthenope's Domain, Virgilian haunt,
Illustrated with never-dying verse,
And, by the Poet's laurel-shaded tomb,
Age after age to Pilgrims from all lands
Endeared.

And who,

In heart as dull in brain,

if not a man as cold

while pacing ground

Chosen by Rome's legendary Bards, high minds

Out of her early struggles well inspired

To localize heroic acts, could look

Upon the spots with undelighted eye,

Though even to their last syllable the Lays And very names of those who gave them birth Have perished? — Verily, to her utmost depth, Imagination feels what Reason fears not

To recognize, the lasting virtue lodged
In those bold fictions that, by deeds assigned

To the Valerian, Fabian, Curian Race,
And others like in fame, created Powers
With attributes from History derived,
By Poesy irradiate, and yet graced,
Through marvellous felicity of skill,
With something more propitious to high aims
Than either, pent within her separate sphere,
Can oft with justice claim.

And not disdaining

Union with those primeval emergies

To virtue consecrate, stoop ye from your height, Christian Traditions! at my Spirit's call Descend, and on the brow of ancient Rome,

As she survives in ruin, manifest

Your glories mingled with the brightest hues
Of her memorial halo, fading, fading,

But never to be extinct while Earth endures.
O, come, if undishonored by the prayer,
From all her Sanctuaries! - Open for my feet,
Ye Catacombs, give to mine eyes a glimpse
Of the Devout, as, 'mid your glooms convened
For safety, they of yore enclasped the Cross
On knees that ceased from trembling, or intoned
Their orisons with voices half suppressed,
But sometimes heard, or fancied to be heard,
Even at this hour.

And thou Mamertine prison,

Into that vault receive me from whose depth
Issues, revealed in no presumptuous vision,
Albeit lifting human to divine,

A Saint, the Church's Rock, the mystic Keys Grasped in his hand; and lo! with upright sword Prefiguring his own impendent doom,

The Apostle of the Gentiles; both prepared

To suffer pains with heathen scorn and hate
Inflicted; - blessed Men, for so to Heaven

They follow their dear Lord!

Time flows,

nor winds,
Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course,
But many a benefit borne upon his breast
For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,
No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth
An angry arm that snatches good away,
Never perhaps to reappear. The Stream
Has to our generation brought, and brings
Innumerable gains; yet we, who now
Walk in the light of day, pertain full surely
To a chilled age, most pitiably shut out
From that which is and actuates, by forms,
Abstractions, and by lifeless fact to fact
Minutely linked with diligence uninspired,
Unrectified, unguided, unsustained,

By godlike insight. To this fate is doomed
Science, wide-spread and spreading still as be
Her conquests, in the world of sense made known.
So with the internal mind it fares; and so
With morals, trusting, in contempt or fear
Of vital principle's controlling law,
To her purblind guide, Expediency; and so
Suffers religious faith. Elate with view

Of what is won, we overlook or scorn

The best that should keep pace with it, and must,
Else more and more the general mind will droop,
Even as if bent on perishing. There lives
No faculty within us which the Soul

Can spare, and humblest earthly Weal demands,
For dignity not placed beyond her reach,
Zealous coöperation of all means

Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.
By gross Utilities enslaved, we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past,
If to the future aught of good must come
Sounder and therefore holier than the ends
Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,
We covet as supreme. O grant the crown

That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff
From Knowledge! - If the Muse, whom I have

served

This day, be mistress of a single pearl
Fit to be placed in that pure diadem,
Then not in vain, under these chestnut-boughs
Reclined, shall I have yielded up my soul
To transports from the secondary founts
Flowing of time and place, and paid to both
Due homage; nor shall fruitlessly have striven,
By love of beauty moved, to enshrine in verse
Accordant meditations, which in times
Vexed and disordered, as our own, may shed
Influence, at least among a scattered few,

To soberness of mind and peace of heart
Friendly; as here to my repose hath been
This flowering broom's dear neighborhood, the light
And murmur issuing from yon pendent flood,
And all the varied landscape. Let us now
Rise, and to-morrow greet magnificent Rome.*

II.

THE PINE OF MONTE MARIO AT ROME.

I SAW far off the dark top of a Pine
Look like a cloud, a slender stem the tie
That bound it to its native earth, poised high

-

'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,
Striving in peace each other to outshine.
But when I learned the Tree was living there,
Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,
O what a gush of tenderness was mine!
The rescued Pine-tree, with its sky so bright
And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,
Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,
Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome

(Then first apparent from the Pincian Height) Crowned with St. Peter's everlasting Dome.†

* See Note..

† See Note.

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