Rome lay before us, hid beyond the peaks
Which rose afar, our longing eyes to guide;
The wave was one whose name a history speaks,
The Tyrrhene sea—the pure blue Tuscan tide.
So many summers, in their gay return,
Have found my pilgrimage still incomplete,
Doomed as I seem, Ulysses-like, to earn
My little knowledge by much toil of feet.
Charmed by the glowing earth and golden sky,
In Arno's vale you made yourself a nest;
There perched in peace and bookish ease, while I
Still journeyed on, and found no place of rest.
And here I am in this prosaic land,
This new Hesperia, less be-rhymed than thine,
Here try the skill of my neglected hand
To catch the favors of the chary Nine.
And here, amid remembrances that throng
Thicker than blossoms in the new-born June,
Thine chiefly claims the witness of a song
That still at least my heart remains in tune.
You will not fail to pardon as you break
The blushing seal that bears the well-known crest;
And every line, however rude, shall wake
Kind thoughts of him who wanders in the West.
But never hope (with so refined a sense
Of what is well conceived and ably wrought,)
To find my verse retain its old pretence
To the smooth utterance of an easy thought.
For who can sing amid this roar of streets,
This crash of engines and discordant mills?
Where, ev'n in Solitude's most hushed retreats,
Machinery drowns the music of the rills?
True, Nature here hath donned her gala robe,
Drest in all charms—wild, savage, and sublime;
Within one realm enfolding half the globe,
Flowers of all soils, and fruits of every clime.
Yet nothing here conveys the musing mind
Beyond the landmarks of the present hour,
Since every impulse is of sordid kind,
Among this race, that moves the Fancy's power.