And with the objects of the dearer care,83
The parting gifts of the old soil are home;
Soon Tusca's grape hangs flushing in the air,
And the glebe ripples with the golden corn;
Gleams on grey slopes the olive's silvery tree,
In her lone Alpine child,—far Fiesolè
Revives—reblooms, but under happier stars!84
Age rolls on age,—upon the antique world
Full many a storm hath graved its thunder scars;
Tombs only speak the Etrurian's language;[9]—hurl'd
To dust the shrines of Naith;[10]—the serpents hiss
On Asia's throne in lorn Persepolis;
The seaweed rots upon the ports of Tyre:85
On Delphi's steep the Pythian's voice is dumb;
Sad Athens leans upon her broken lyre;
From the doom'd East the Bethlem Star hath come;
But Rome an empire from an empire's loss
Gains in the god Rome yielded to the Cross!
And here, as in a crypt, the miser Time,86
Hoards, from all else, embedded in the stone,
One eldest treasure—fresh as when, sublime
O'er gods and men, Jove thunder'd from his throne—
The garb, the arts, the creed, the tongue, the same
As when to Tarquin Cuma's sibyl came.
The soil's first fathers, with elaborate hands,87
Had closed the rocky portals of the place;
No egress opens to unhappier lands:
As tree on tree, so race succeeds to race,
From sleep the passions no temptations draw,
And strife bows childlike to the patriarch's law;
Lull'd was ambition; each soft lot was cast;88
Gold had no use; with war expired renown;
From priest to priest mysterious reverence past;
From king to king the mild Saturnian crown:
Like dews, the rest came harmless into birth;
Like dews exhaling—after gladd'ning earth.
Not wholly dead, indeed, the love of praise—89
When can that warmth from heaven forsake the heart?
The Hister's[11] lyre still thrill'd with Camsee's lays,
Still urn and statue caught the Arretian art,
And hands, least skill'd, found leisure still to cull
Some flowers, in offering to the Beautiful.
Hence the whole vale one garden of delight;90
Hence every home a temple for the Grace:
Who worships Nature finds in Art the rite;
And Beauty grows the Genius of the Place.
Enough this record of the happy land:
Whom watch, whom wait ye for, O lovely band?
Listen awhile!—The strength of that soft state,91
The arch's key-stones, are the priest and king;
To guard all power inviolate from debate,
To curb all impulse, or direct its wing,
In antique forms to mould from childhood all;—
This guards more strongly than the Alpine wall.
The regal chief might wed as choice inclined,92
Not so the daughters sprung from his embrace,
Law, strong as caste, their nuptial rite confined
To the pure circle of the Lartian race;
Hence with more awe the kingly house was view'd,
Hence nipp'd ambition bore no rival feud.