LITMIR.BIZ

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Are faithful to thine honour:- guard them well,

       O childless city! for a mighty spell,

       To wake men’s hearts to dreams of things sublime,

       Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time.

      III.

      Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain,

       Marks where the bravest knight of France was slain,—

       The Prince of chivalry, the Lord of war,

       Gaston de Foix: for some untimely star

       Led him against thy city, and he fell,

       As falls some forest-lion fighting well.

       Taken from life while life and love were new,

       He lies beneath God’s seamless veil of blue;

       Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o’er his head,

       And oleanders bloom to deeper red,

       Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.

       Look farther north unto that broken mound,—

       There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb

       Raised by a daughter’s hand, in lonely gloom,

       Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,

       Sleeps after all his weary conquering.

       Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind and rain

       Have broken down his stronghold; and again

       We see that Death is mighty lord of all,

       And king and clown to ashen dust must fall

       Mighty indeed THEIR glory! yet to me

       Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,

       Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,

       Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.

       His gilded shrine lies open to the air;

       And cunning sculptor’s hands have carven there

       The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,

       The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,

       The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,

       The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,

       The weary face of Dante;—to this day,

       Here in his place of resting, far away

       From Arno’s yellow waters, rushing down

       Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,

       Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise

       A marble lily under sapphire skies!

       Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain

       Of meaner lives,—the exile’s galling chain,

       How steep the stairs within kings’ houses are,

       And all the petty miseries which mar

       Man’s nobler nature with the sense of wrong.

       Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;

       Our nations do thee homage,—even she,

       That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,

       Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,

       Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,

       And begs in vain the ashes of her son.

       O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:

       Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice;

       Ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace.

      IV.

      How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!

       No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls.

       The broken chain lies rusting on the door,

       And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:

       Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run

       By the stone lions blinking in the sun.

       Byron dwelt here in love and revelry

       For two long years—a second Anthony,

       Who of the world another Actium made!

       Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,

       Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,

       ‘Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.

       For from the East there came a mighty cry,

       And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,

       And called him from Ravenna: never knight

       Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!

       None fell more bravely on ensanguined field,

       Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield!

       O Hellas! Hellas! in thine hour of pride,

       Thy day of might, remember him who died

       To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain:

       O Salamis! O lone Plataean plain!

       O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea!

       O windswept heights of lone Thermopylae!

       He loved you well—ay, not alone in word,

       Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword,

       Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon:

       And England, too, shall glory in her son,

       Her warrior-poet, first in song and fight.

       No longer now shall Slander’s venomed spite

       Crawl like a snake across his perfect name,

       Or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame.

       For as the olive-garland of the race,

       Which lights with joy each eager runner’s face,

       As the red cross which saveth men in war,

       As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far

       By mariners upon a storm-tossed sea,—

       Such was his love for Greece and Liberty!

       Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green:

       Red leaves of rose from Sapphic Mitylene

       Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee,

       In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;

       The laurels wait thy coming: all are thine,

       And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine.

      V.

      The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze

       With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,

       And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright;—

       I wandered through the wood in wild delight,

       Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,

       Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,

       Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,

       And small birds sang on every twining spray.

       O waving trees, O forest liberty!

       Within your haunts at least a man is free,

       And half forgets the weary world of strife:

       The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life

       Wakes i’ the quickening veins, while once again

      

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