Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Part 23

The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear: Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.

Cx.x.xIX.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.

And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the b.l.o.o.d.y circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not?

What matters where we fall to fill the maws Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

CXL.

I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low-- And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him: he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

CXLI.

He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, THERE were his young barbarians all at play, THERE was their Dacian mother--he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday-- All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire, And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

CXLII.

But here, where murder breathed her b.l.o.o.d.y steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void--seats crushed, walls bowed, And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII.

A ruin--yet what ruin! from its ma.s.s Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared; Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pa.s.s, And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.

Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?

Alas! developed, opens the decay, When the colossal fabric's form is neared: It will not bear the brightness of the day, Which streams too much on all, years, man, have reft away.

CXLIV.

But when the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air, The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head; When the light shines serene, but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.

CXLV.

'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls--the World.' From our own land Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call Ancient; and these three mortal things are still On their foundations, and unaltered all; Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, The World, the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime-- Shrine of all saints and temple of all G.o.ds, From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by time; Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods His way through thorns to ashes--glorious dome!

Shalt thou not last?--Time's scythe and tyrants' rods Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home Of art and piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome!

CXLVII.

Relic of n.o.bler days, and n.o.blest arts!

Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads A holiness appealing to all hearts-- To art a model; and to him who treads Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds Her light through thy sole aperture; to those Who worship, here are altars for their beads; And they who feel for genius may repose Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!

Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight-- Two insulated phantoms of the brain: It is not so: I see them full and plain-- An old man, and a female young and fair, Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where ON the heart and FROM the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves-- What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift:--it is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire While in those warm and lovely veins the fire Of health and holy feeling can provide Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side Drink, drink and live, old man! heaven's realm holds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the milky way Has not thy story's purity; it is A constellation of a sweeter ray, And sacred Nature triumphs more in this Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest nurse!

No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.

CLII.

Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high, Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, Colossal copyist of deformity, Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils To build for giants, and for his vain earth, His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth, To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

CLIII.

But lo! the dome--the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell-- Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle-- Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell The hyaena and the jackal in their shade; I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering ma.s.s i' the sun, and have surveyed Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone--with nothing like to thee-- Worthiest of G.o.d, the holy and the true, Since Zion's desolation, when that he Forsook his former city, what could be, Of earthly structures, in his honour piled, Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind, Expanded by the genius of the spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of immortality; and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, See thy G.o.d face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

CLVI.

Thou movest--but increasing with th' advance, Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance; Vastness which grows--but grows to harmonise-- All musical in its immensities; Rich marbles--richer painting--shrines where flame The lamps of gold--and haughty dome which vies In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim.

CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break To separate contemplation, the great whole; And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul To more immediate objects, and control Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart Its eloquent proportions, and unroll In mighty graduations, part by part, The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

CLVIII.

Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is That what we have of feeling most intense Outstrips our faint expression; e'en so this Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great Defies at first our nature's littleness, Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause and be enlightened; there is more In such a survey than the sating gaze Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place, or the mere praise Of art and its great masters, who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan; The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

CLX.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Laoc.o.o.n's torture dignifying pain-- A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.