In Rome: A Poem In Sonnets Poem by Alexander Anderson

'Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non è più come era prima!'


I

To-morrow I will be in Rome, and thou
Within thy village. I can see thee stand,
Thine eyes in the direction of this land:
Fair pillar of the past, as it is now
The refuge of its heirlooms. In my ears
I hear thee speaking as upon that day
We parted, saying—'When thou goest away
To make a golden epoch in thy years
By travel, speak not of the Rhine's broad roll,
Mount Blanc, the Yungfrau, or the Alps that rise
Like icy Titans, nor of sunset skies;
But when thou come'st to Rome let all thy soul
Fly to the past, and as it speaks to thee
From out its temples, speak thou so to me.'


II

The one dream of our boyhood! Dost thou not
Remember how we stood in mimic fight,
And marshall'd all our legion's puny might,
Then fann'd ourselves to ardour fierce and hot?
'Thus struck a Roman for his Rome!' we cried—
'Thus, thus into the gulf a Curtius leapt!'
  And with a sudden shout and rush we swept
The foe back, till they fled on every side.
Then came the hymn of triumph, and the car
Bearing the victor to the feast and wine,
And the delights of smiling peace and home;
All this was with me of that mimic war,
As I passed through the arch of Constantine,
And stood within the centuries and Rome!


III

If thou have, for the weak, defenceless past
Aught in thee like to reverence, be dumb,
And speak not, but let thought and feeling come
As mourners, and in kindred silence cast
Their sorrow on this city, now no more
The foreground of the world, but lying dead,
While the great present with its hasty tread
Moves on, and turns not save but to deplore.
The background of our Planet! But in death
She hath that awe which broods upon the face
Of the new dead, so in her fallen place
A power is with her still, though all her faith
Is snapt like her own temples in the dust,
And fades with centuries of age and rust.


IV

I am in Rome, and underneath the spell
Of her past glory; as I tread her streets,
My soul keeps saying, as a child repeats
Its lesson—'The Eternal, here they dwell!'
I am alone, though in the busy crowd,
Yet mighty spirits keep their pace with mine:
Horace and Virgil, and those names divine
That in the world for ever speak aloud.
The past is with me, and my eyes are blind
To all the modern change on either side;
I stride a Roman, with a Roman's stride,
And feel a Roman's firmness fire my mind.
I even hail the victor from afar,
And join the through that shout behind his car.


V

Yet after all, when the soul finds its home,
And we look with our daily eyes, we ask
(Doubt round us like a mist) 'Can this be Rome?'
And the slow answer is a mighty task.
Can this indeed be Rome, who from her heart
Sent shocks of life, like blood, through distant lands,
Whose Kings were sons to her by Roman bands
Of valour, and their tribute fill'd her mart?
The Jupiter of cities! Now, alas!
Upon her throne of seven hills, she seems
The shadow of a thousand former dreams,
Pointing to all the splendid pomp that was.
Even her columns seem to start and glow
Into Cassandras, and wail forth her woe.


VI

Where'er thou stand in ancient Rome there seems
A shadow with thee; and if thy keen thought
Turn pilgrim to the shrine of thy great dreams—
Paying continual homage as it ought—
Thou art but fool'd; and if thou rear again
Columns and gods and temples, and within
The silent Forum place her mightiest men,
Whose eloquence could calm and still the din
Of factions, lo! the Presence at thy side
Cries, 'Siste, viator,' and from out the past
Thy soul comes, and instead of all the pride
And high magnificence that was, thou hast,
Like garments of the mighty flung away,
Marbles and columns in one mix'd decay.


VII

What high, great thoughts might leap within the breast
Of the stern Romulus, that day when he
Ran a light furrow round his Rome to be,
Built huts, and, for a moment, took his rest.
Would he had been a Capys then, and seen,
From the rude doorway, all the splendid power
Taking still birth from out that quiet hour,
And spreading like a shadow all between
The earth and sky, until its mighty wings
Were at full stretch, and a great empire stood
Flinging steel network over earthly things,
Till, tired of uncheck'd force and constant blood,
Turn'd like the Titans, when it thus had striven,
And dared to parcel out the rights of heaven.


VIII

I saw the mighty form of giant Time!
He stood; within his hands were balances:
He held them up; two kingdoms were in these;
One sunk; the other rose and flower'd to prime.
Around his feet his sons, the young, keen years,
Wrestled and shaped fresh worlds; as they shaped
They look'd up; through their lips a moan escaped,
And in their eyes was something like to tears.
Then with one voice they cried—'Is not the hour
Ready? Put down thy balances, and lift
The nations we have foster'd as a gift
For thee.' And Time, frowning till eyebrows met,
Shook his white locks in sternly potent power,
Then whisper'd back to them—'Not yet, not yet!'


IX

St Peter's! how thy soul within thee grows
And widens out in worship, as if God
Had made this dome a moment His abode;
Then left His awful shadow to repose
Within its walls for ages. Let no speech,
Or aught of earth be with thee, in this hour
When the full past falls, like a sudden shower
Upon thee, bringing into all thy reach
The sacredness of what it hallows, till
Thou standest not on marble but on air,
Feeling thyself uplifted by the will
Of some great Presence dwelling everywhere;
Then, looking up, see right before thine eyes
God's very threshold to the bending skies.


X

The first brief hour within the Vatican
Is one in which thy soul can find no speech;
But dumbly yearns to gain those points to which
Climb the great possibilities of man.
Frescoes, mosaics, statues; all that speaks
Of the creative and refining power—
God's share in man—that ever like a dower
Falls on him, and in fruitful silence seeks
High forms to build it forth, is here; and we,
Who pilgrimage to all our greater kind,
Know not the force that leads us, but must bow
Before the eternal Roman sway of mind,
Blind with the same clear light which now I see
Upon the beautiful Meleager's brow.


XI

To shape, when the pure thought was high and free,
Some mighty god, that, ever as we look,
We feel its godhead with a stern rebuke
Claim worship, and we almost bend the knee—
This is the task of those grand souls who stand
A thousand years between them; for the given
Fire, burning at the very core of heaven,
Cannot be flung broadcast from out the hand;
But where it lights, ay, there it ever burns,
A clear flame on the ember'd hearth of Time,
Quenchless but with himself. Lo! how it turns
From the high Greek and all his higher glow,
And, shooting onward to a sister clime,
Crowns with no stint a later Angelo.


XII

The thoughts that only mate with gods alone,
And all that high conception when the mind
Looks heavenward for a model to its kind
Of what a god may be, meet here in stone.
The Sun God! Dost thou not behold him now
With head thrown back, as if his native sky
Had come, in some wild moment, all to nigh,
Then fled, but left its splendours on his brow?
Thou glorious Archer! In that awful hour,
Granted by heaven, did the sculptor kneel
Before his chisel touch'd the virgin block,
Feeling thy presence give consent and power?
We know not. We can only see and feel
That heaven's fire with his sped every stroke.


XIII

Back to the grand Apollo! Tell me not
A mortal had to do with this. I know
That if a god content him here below,
A mightier god must bind him to the spot.
Can this be genius that can so enthral,
And lift us, Mahomet-like, until we feel
The very heaven around us, and we reel
In the delight of worship? Who can call
This splendid triumph stone? Say rather we
Behold a god who came to men, and met
His punishment in marble; yet he lives
While we, with all our throbbing being set,
Worship with the bold thought that it may be
Idolatry that heaven itself forgives.


XIV

I turn'd from the Apollo with my mind
Back to the Venus. I can see her now
Looking at me with that divine-like brow
Round which the adoring world will ever bind
Its love for ages. All that hath been sung
Since time grew up to manhood lingers round
That snowy form, that ever seems spell-bound
In its own whiteness, and for ever young.
We lose our being as we look and wear
Into her beauty, and become as naught;
We are the stone, and she the glowing thought,
Haunting us with her presence everywhere—
Goddess of Love—and we who stand but seem
To touch the confines of her endless dream!


XV

I see her yet—the glorious shape to which
The pilgrim fondly wanders! Let me kneel,
As if in that one act my soul could feel
And, all miraculously lifted, reach
The sculptor's height in that impassioned hour
When the fair dream the world will not let die
Took shape in stone, as if a god were nigh,
Limb, breast, and brow asserting conscious power
And claiming worship. O! did she look thus
In that sweet hour, when glowing from her flight
She knelt by Endymion in delight,
Kissing his brow and lip, and tremulous
With sighs from heaven, whisper, 'It is he,
The Latmian!'—and so let her passion free.


XVI

I stood before the Laocoön, and felt
A soul move in the stone; as if the pain
Forever prison'd there had power to melt
And fuse itself in double strength again
Into the gazer as he stands, and feels
The marble horror catch his breath until
He sinks, and, in his very weakness, reels
Before that form those coilings never kill.
Look on the father who with quivering form
Strives to unlace the strain that never slips,
But keeps eternal clasp upon the place;
While all the agony, like a lake in storm,
Moves from huge limbs to straining finger tips,
Then makes a dread Vesuvius of the face.


XVII

Temple of all the gods! and here the dust
Of one reposes, who with early fame
Went into death, and left behind the name
Of Raphael, to defy the years' quick rust.
How shall we name him who with quick, pure eyes
Saw Heaven's Divinest, and in earth-made hues
Painted the glory of His look, as dews
Catch the first light that falls from summer skies?
Say, poet of Christ in colours, who stood near
The light of heaven, until its very strength
Took him all kindly to itself at length,
Yet left him not, but went before his bier,
And, soul-like in that work, his last and best,
Saw the great Master enter into rest.


XVIII

The stone rolls from His feet like mountain mist;
Before Him, ghost-like, in the vanquish'd tomb,
The bands of linen lie within the gloom—
White pledges of the newly-risen Christ.
He comes forth! from the splendour of His brow
Gethsemane and the Cross have fled. He stands,
A halo of love around Him, as His hands
Clasp each in prayer; God's early morning glow
Falls on Him, matching in those deep, sad eyes
The light of conquest gain'd for all our race,
As if God bent Himself, and from above
Shed on Him all the glory of the skies;
While the earth, dumb at such astounding love,
Turns round to gaze forever on His face.


XIX

Here on this spot the heroic martyr stood,
God's fire upon his brow and in his heart,
As the two gladiators drew apart
Glaring at each in their wild thirst for blood.
Lo! as the centuries roll aside their gloom
We see him yet; the hero as he sinks
Keeps to his purpose born of Christ, nor shrinks
Though human tigers track him to his doom.
Talk of this planet's holy spots! my feet
Within this amphitheatre are on
Its holiest, for a brother here alone
Stood up for God and man, till in the heat
Of Roman thirst for blood he sank, and pass'd
An early Livingstone, but not the last.


XX

I saw the stage of Time, and on it kings
Strutted and fought, then laid them on the bed
Of earth, that took them, like the blood they shed,
Kindly; and they were with forgotten things.
Then nations rose, who, branching out, became
The very backbone of the universe.
They reach'd their bloom until, as when a curse
Withers, they shrank and dwindled like a flame
That lacks fresh fuel. All this while I saw
Shadows creep o'er their ruins, and in awe
I turn'd to Time, and ask'd him to define
These shadows; and he answer'd thus to me—
'These are the forecasts of great worlds to be;'
I woke, and I was on the Palatine.


XXI

Are nations, then, like flowers that have their bloom,
Dying, as the still centuries pass away?
Alas! behind their acmè lurks the doom
To write its 'Mene' on corroding clay.
Belief, whether it be in gods or God,
Can still work miracles; but if it fail,
And Argus doubt with poisonous darts assail
Its inmost hold; then realms and men corrode.
The centuries behind teach this. Look back!
Lo! from the wreck of worlds stand Greece and Rome
As skeleton witnesses of this, whose track
Shows what may be when doubt has found a home.
I stood in Rome, but, when this came to me,
My England! I was looking back to thee.


XXII

Two of great England's singers, lying each
By each: one rose up wroth at human wrong,
And hung half-way to heaven in his song,
Till the heart burst in his desire to teach
The melody he heard from where he was.
The other wander'd to the early past
Yearning with a boy's ardour to recast
Its mythologic utterances. But as
The sun takes dews, so did their beauty him;
He pass'd, leaving behind sweet words that must
Forever keep him here. The other, too,
Left melody that still will float and swim;
Aerial mist with heaven shining through,
And here a foot or two divides their dust.


XXIII

Cor Cordium, thou art near to Shelley's heart;
Stop, if thou canst, the beatings of thine own,
For here a purer beats a perfect part,
And models thought upon a purer tone.
Ay, Shelley's heart, it may be naught to thee,
But in it lay the light which, though unseen,
Had the full stamp of that which is to be—
It now is, but the earth is all between.
I claim no tears for him. If thou art one
Who hears between the breathing of the years,
Thou shalt not miss his music; if alone,
It shall be sweeter and seem from the spheres;
For his was from the higher realm of good
Brought down to men, not to be understood.


XXIV

And wilt thou go away from Rome, nor see
The resting-place of Keats, from whom thy soul
Took early draughts of worship and control—
Poet thyself, and from beyond the sea?
I turn'd, and stood beside his grassy grave,
Almost within the shadow of the wall
Honorian; and as kindred spirits call
Each unto each, my own rose up to crave
A moment's sweet renewal by the dust
Of that high interchange in vanish'd time,
When my young soul was reeling with his prime;
But now my manhood lay across that trust.
Ah! had I stood here in my early years,
This simple headstone had been wet with tears.


XXV

I go, for wider is the space that lies
Between the sleeper in this grave and me;
I look back on my golden youth, but he
Cannot look backward with less passion'd eyes.
There is no change in him; the fading glory
Of mighty Rome's long triumph is around,
But cannot come anear or pierce the bound
Of this our laurell'd sleeper, whose pale story
Takes fresher lustre with the years that fly.
But Roman dust upon an English heart
Is naught, yet this is Keats's, and a part
Of England's spirit. With a weary sigh
I turn from sacred ground, and all the way
Two spirits were with me—Keats and David Gray.


XXVI

I left the crowd to its own will, and mused
Upon thy village life, that scarcely opes
One pathway for the liberal thought, nor copes
With the result that broadens; but suffused
With straiten'd range of thought, keeps on, nor sees
The world with proper vision. Creeds and sects
Are here, still seeing within each defects,
And men will battle to the last for these.
It will be so. Yet think, ere we condemn,
What our faith is to us is theirs to them;
And so grow broad with sympathy, nor sink
Into the barren pasture of old saws,
But think that God will open up His laws,
And tell us we are safer than we think.


XXVII

Tiber! thy city's great have sunk and died
Making her famous, yet thou rollest on
(For time shrinks back from nature): in thy tone
To me, a pilgrim standing by thy side,
A threnody comes forth and fills my ears;
And all the heroic annals of the past
Rise up, as if the hand of time had cast
Its fingers on the keyboard of the years,
Hymning their changes. What a mighty reach
From the wild, fierce, wolf-suckled twins until
Seven hills saw mighty Rome repose on each—
Gateway to worlds which she oped at will,
But now forever shut, and in her ken
No 'sesame' to open them again!


XXVIII

Tiber! before I pass away from thee,
One other dream. I stand with half-shut eye,
And hear a mighty army's vaunt and cry;
Then see within the pass the heroic Three.
Hark to the clang that strikes against the bridge
That shakes (such strength was in a Roman's blow,
When faith was potent centuries ago):
Then the loud crash, as two from off its ledge
Leap among friends. But where is he, the best,
The mightiest—Horatius? In thy wave
He plunges, and around him thou dost lave
Thy yellow surges on his mailèd breast.
Thy foam is on his beard, he gains the land,
Thou Roman! and I stretch him forth my hand.


XXIX

Who rests within this soil must slumber well,
For on it the sad, earnest past hath shed
Its holiest consecration, and the dead
Know it, and beneath can feel its spell;
To die, then, and to rest in Roman mould
Were something: wearing into all the past,
Whose glory like a sunbeam backward cast
Might keep the heart from ever growing cold.
It is as if the spirit of ancient Rome
Unveiling all its glory, cried—'Come ye
And look upon me, but in looking die,
And let thy dust within my shadow lie,
While the soul flying from its first found home,
Comes to me with the dreams it had of me.'


XXX

I lean back. I am ripe for dreams to-day;
For who that rests beneath a sky like this
Could shirk their soft existence, and so miss
Communings that etherealise the clay?
Rome is her own wide grave, and there can be
No aftermath for her. The wise and good—
Her foster-children—claim'd it as they stood.
Through the spent avalanche of the years I see
The light of each great soul, and, dreaming on,
What Rome was sinks, as if to make a base
To the grand structure of the mind which God
Seals as a symbol of Himself alone;
I enter; though I cannot see His face
I know that I am near His pure abode.


XXXI

Roma! Roma! Roma! Thus my lips
Took the soft language of the glowing skies
Of Italy. A stranger with dim eyes
Takes leave of thee, and like a shadow slips
From thy fair presence. With me I had brought
Dreams of my boyhood, and I take away
Others of sadder colour, as one may
When leaving the still room wherein our thought
Is with the sainted dead. But as I go
I feel that ever after in my breast
What Rome has been, and is, will take its rest,
And be a picture in me, with the glow
Of sunset over it. Her mighty great
Are with her to the end, above her fate.


XXXII

The ruins of years—nay, Time himself—are here:
I sit within them; but the brooding heart
Wanders to Florence, to become a part
Of one, by whom, as we walk with our peer,
Sorrow went forth, nor left him till he died—
Dante, upon whose cheek the grime of hell
Seems half-wash'd off by the hot tears that fell
At sight of those that wail'd on either side.
He stood in heaven with that spot, but still
The effluence from the celestial glow
Of her who led him, made him feel the ill
He left behind on earth. So stern yet meek
He went, not looking up, but bent his brow,
Conscious of the black stain upon his cheek.


XXXIII

Florence! they cried, and as they spoke, I stood,
And said—the quick tears filling up my eyes—
Dante's lost city, which, with life-long sighs,
He yearn'd for in his exile, whence the brood
Of factions drove him. Had he found this home,
One marvel less had been in books, and we
Had seen no vision of the world to be,
Or known how far thought can be made to roam.
Dante's lost city! In these words we feel
That lone worn spirit of his break forth in sighs,
And all our own half-smitten, till we reel,
Seeing those eyes that seem so sunk and dull,
By looking on the gnawing of the skull,
Or blinded by the light of Paradise.


XXXIV

Infinite sorrow, like a martyr's crown,
Rests upon Dante. Looking from those eyes
That hide it not, though ever looking down,
While those of Beatrice pierce the seventh skies.
Dost thou remember how we stood, and kept
Our gaze upon the picture where the two
Were thus seen? She so pure and sweet to view:
He earthy, though within the heavens. I wept,
Touch'd with the spirit of his grief, which spoke
To mine, until when from my trance I woke
I heard thee say—'In these two are express'd
The higher and the lower nature, which,
Being within us, we are claimed by each,
Like the two spirits in Faust's weary breast.'


XXXV

The rapt diviner poets struggle still,
Like angels with one wing, to reach their heaven,
Though it may be with dust-soil'd pinion, till
Death pities, and the other wing is given.
This earth is not for them, and when they come
They stand as strangers, till, at last, they speak
Their mission in keen melody, through which
Floats the deep yearning to regain their home,
Which, though they stand on earth, is in their reach,
Till the light fades upon their brow and cheek;
Then heaven takes back its own that was so sweet.
In this thought I can lie in Italy,
And roll aside part of the sky, and see
Beatrice with Dante at her feet.


XXXVI

In England now! and yet the Rome I left
Follows me like a shadow. I can still
Limn forth those ruins, which men's hands and skill
Made for the ages. But the Goth hath cleft
His ruthless way, and time has follow'd him.
The Forum, Colosseum, Capitol,
The Cæsar's palaces, now dark and dim,
The Circus and the Pantheon, the soul
Of what Rome was, her temples, all is dead
But that which was of heaven; the far thought
Of poet, sage, historian, still have part
In all the present; Sculpture bows her head,
And full-eyed Painting, with her glorious art,
Puts down her footstep, hallowing all the spot.


XXXVII

To-morrow I will be with thee, and break
Upon thy silence, and thy treasured looks.
In fancy I can see thy eager looks
And hear thy sudden questions, as we take
Our evening walk adown the little street.
How did I feel when in the evening hour
I stood within the Forum, with the power
Of Cicero upon me? Did my feet
Half shrink to touch the ground where the abodes
Of men had been who were fit mates for gods?
And last—What have you brought me? For I crave
Some souvenir of fallen Rome, and I,
Knowing thy early worship, will reply—
A wither'd violet from Keats's grave.