Thou art entwinëd with all lovely things
That bind a rosy chaplet round the earth;
The life of Poets, whose sweet utterings
Have the soft cadence of an angel's mirth;
The springs of genius—high imaginings
That are the wealth of ages, and the birth
Of Art, beneath whose vivifying wand
The stone, the canvas, animated, stand.
III.
Thy very dust is hallowed, and we tread
The footsteps of the mighty, meeting ever
The prized memorials of the Living Dead,
Those whose sublimëd spirits, waning never,
Hover around the struggling world and shed
Their blessings o'er it, which nor time can sever,
Nor can oblivion crush, but which endure
Strong in their greatness, in their truth secure.
IV.
Would that some faint ray of the heavenly light
Shower'd on thy children now might rest on me,
Illume my twilight thoughts and grant me sight
Into the depths of Nature's poesie;
And tune my faltering tones to breathe aright
That which my heart so fondly feels of thee,
For 'twere a music sweet as heaven's own lays,
Could love's deep soul be cadenced in thy praise.
V.
There was a garden sloping to the west,
Smooth'd downward from the giant Apennines,
The serried outlines of whose hoary crest
Blent with the distant heavens in mystic lines,
At eventide with golden splendours drest,
When the red sun its farewell greeting shines;
A palace topped it, from whose terraced height
Wound a broad stair of marble, snowy white.