Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto IV — Verses 60-77

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones?

Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones Of merchant-dukes?

the momentary dews Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, Are gently prest with far more reverent tread Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;

There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;

For I have been accustomed to entwine My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields Than Art in galleries: though a work divine Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;

For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles Come back before me, as his skill beguiles The host between the mountains and the shore, Where Courage falls in her despairing files, And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er, LXIII.

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;

And such the storm of battle on this day, And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, An earthquake reeled unheededly away!

None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, And yawning forth a grave for those who lay Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;

Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.

LXIV.

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark Which bore them to Eternity; they saw The Ocean round, but had no time to mark The motions of their vessel: Nature's law, In them suspended, recked not of the awe Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.

LXV.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;

Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;

Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en-- A little rill of scanty stream and bed-- A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;

And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.

LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus!

in thy sweetest wave Of the most living crystal that was e'er The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear: Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a temple still, Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, Upon a mild declivity of hill, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps The finny darter with the glittering scales, Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;

While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the genius of the place!

If through the air a zephyr more serene Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace Along his margin a more eloquent green, If on the heart the freshness of the scene Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust Of weary life a moment lave it clean With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters!

--from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters!

rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The hell of waters!

where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald.

How profound The gulf!

and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows More like the fountain of an infant sea Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes Of a new world, than only thus to be Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, With many windings through the vale:--Look back!

Lo!

where it comes like an eternity, As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract, LXXII.

Horribly beautiful!

but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: Resembling, mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII.

Once more upon the woody Apennine, The infant Alps, which--had I not before Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar The thundering lauwine--might be worshipped more;

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, LXXIV.

The Acroceraunian mountains of old name;

And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soared unutterably high: I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;

Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed, Not NOW in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain May he who will his recollections rake, And quote in classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learned, Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought By the impatience of my early thought, That, with the freshness wearing out before My mind could relish what it might have sought, If free to choose, I cannot now restore Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse, Although no deeper moralist rehearse Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce, Awakening without wounding the touched heart, Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.