In the Coliseum

CAVALIERI.What have you here alone, Messer Michele?

I come to learn.

CAVALIERI.You are already master,And teach all other men.

Nay, I know nothing;Not even my own ignorance, as somePhilosopher hath said. I am a schoolboyWho hath not learned his lesson, and who standsAshamed and silent in the awful presenceOf the great master of antiquityWho built these walls cyclopean.

CAVALIERI.GaudentiusHis name was, I remember. His rewardWas to be thrown alive to the wild beastsHere where we now are standing.

Idle tales.

CAVALIERI.But you are greater than Gaudentius was,And your work nobler.

Silence, I beseech you.

CAVALIERI.Tradition says that fifteen thousand menWere toiling for ten years incessantlyUpon this amphitheatre.

BeholdHow wonderful it is! The queen of flowers,The marble rose of Rome! Its petals tornBy wind and rain of thrice five hundred years;Its mossy sheath half rent away, and soldTo ornament our palaces and churches,Or to be trodden under feet of manUpon the Tiber's bank; yet what remainsStill opening its fair bosom to the sun,And to the constellations that at nightHang poised above it like a swarm of bees.

CAVALIERI.The rose of Rome, but not of Paradise;Not the white rose our Tuscan poet saw,With saints for petals. When this rose was perfectIts hundred thousand petals were not Saints,But senators in their Thessalian caps,And all the roaring populace of Rome;And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins,Who came to see the gladiators die,Could not give sweetness to a rose like this.

I spake not of its uses, but its beauty.

CAVALIERI.The sand beneath our feet is saturateWith blood of martyrs; and these rifted stonesAre awful witnesses against a peopleWhose pleasure was the pain of dying men.

Tomaso Cavalieri, on my word,You should have been a preacher, not a painter!Think you that I approve such cruelties,Because I marvel at the architectsWho built these walls, and curved these noble arches?Oh, I am put to shame, when I considerHow mean our work is, when compared with theirs!Look at these walls about us and above us!They have been shaken by earthquake; have been madeA fortress, and been battered by long sieges;The iron clamps, that held the stones together,Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erectAnd firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowedOut of the solid rock, and were a partOf the foundations of the world itself.

CAVALIERI.Your work, I say again, is nobler work,In so far as its end and aim are nobler;And this is but a ruin, like the rest.Its vaulted passages are made the cavernsOf robbers, and are haunted by the ghostsOf murdered men.

A thousand wild flowers bloomFrom every chink, and the birds build their nestsAmong the ruined arches, and suggestNew thoughts of beauty to the architect,Now let us climb the broken stairs that leadInto the corridors above, and studyThe marvel and the mystery of that artIn which I am a pupil, not a master.All things must have an end; the world itselfMust have an end, as in a dream I saw it.There came a great hand out of heaven, and touchedThe earth, and stopped it in its course. The seasLeaped, a vast cataract, into the abyss;The forests and the fields slid off, and floatedLike wooded islands in the air. The deadWere hurled forth from their sepulchres; the livingWere mingled with them, and themselves were dead,--All being dead; and the fair, shining citiesDropped out like jewels from a broken crown.Naught but the core of the great globe remained,A skeleton of stone. And over itThe wrack of matter drifted like a cloud,And then recoiled upon itself, and fellBack on the empty world, that with the weightReeled, staggered, righted, and then headlong plungedInto the darkness, as a ship, when struckBy a great sea, throws off the waves at firstOn either side, then settles and goes downInto the dark abyss, with her dead crew.

CAVALIERI.But the earth does not move.

Who knows? who knowst?There are great truths that pitch their shining tentsOutside our walls, and though but dimly seenIn the gray dawn, they will be manifestWhen the light widens into perfect day.A certain man, Copernicus by name,Sometime professor here in Rome, has whisperedIt is the earth, and not the sun, that moves.What I beheld was only in a dream,Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events,Being unsubstantial images of thingsAs yet unseen.