Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

Many a green isle needs must beIn the deep wide sea of Misery,Or the mariner, worn and wan,Never thus could voyage on--Day and night, and night and day,Drifting on his dreary way,With the solid darkness blackClosing round his vessel's track:Whilst above the sunless sky,Big with clouds, hangs heavily,And behind the tempest fleetHurries on with lightning feet,Riving sail, and cord, and plank,Till the ship has almost drankDeath from the o'er-brimming deep;And sinks down, down, like that sleepWhen the dreamer seems to beWeltering through eternity;And the dim low line beforeOf a dark and distant shoreStill recedes, as ever stillLonging with divided will,But no power to seek or shun,He is ever drifted onO'er the unreposing waveTo the haven of the grave.What, if there no friends will greet;What, if there no heart will meetHis with love's impatient beat;Wander wheresoe'er he may,Can he dream before that dayTo find refuge from distressIn friendship's smile, in love's caress?Then 'twill wreak him little woeWhether such there be or no:Senseless is the breast, and cold,Which relenting love would fold;Bloodless are the veins and chillWhich the pulse of pain did fill;Every little living nerveThat from bitter words did swerveRound the tortured lips and brow,Are like sapless leaflets nowFrozen upon December's bough.

On the beach of a northern seaWhich tempests shake eternally,As once the wretch there lay to sleep,Lies a solitary heap,One white skull and seven dry bones,On the margin of the stones,Where a few gray rushes stand,Boundaries of the sea and land:Nor is heard one voice of wailBut the sea-mews, as they sailO'er the billows of the gale;Or the whirlwind up and downHowling, like a slaughtered town,When a king in glory ridesThrough the pomp of fratricides:Those unburied bones aroundThere is many a mournful sound;There is no lament for him,Like a sunless vapour, dim,Who once clothed with life and thoughtWhat now moves nor murmurs not.

Ay, many flowering islands lieIn the waters of wide Agony:To such a one this morn was led,My bark by soft winds piloted:'Mid the mountains EuganeanI stood listening to the paeanWith which the legioned rooks did hailThe sun's uprise majestical;Gathering round with wings all hoar,Through the dewy mist they soarLike gray shades, till the eastern heavenBursts, and then, as clouds of even,Flecked with fire and azure, lieIn the unfathomable sky,So their plumes of purple grain,Starred with drops of golden rain,Gleam above the sunlight woods,As in silent multitudesOn the morning's fitful galeThrough the broken mist they sail,And the vapours cloven and gleamingFollow, down the dark steep streaming,Till all is bright, and clear, and still,Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green seaThe waveless plain of Lombardy,Bounded by the vaporous air,Islanded by cities fair;Underneath Day's azure eyesOcean's nursling, Venice lies,A peopled labyrinth of walls,Amphitrite's destined halls,Which her hoary sire now pavesWith his blue and beaming waves.Lo! the sun upsprings behind,Broad, red, radiant, half-reclinedOn the level quivering lineOf the waters crystalline;And before that chasm of light,As within a furnace bright,Column, tower, and dome, and spire,Shine like obelisks of fire,Pointing with inconstant motionFrom the altar of dark oceanTo the sapphire-tinted skies;As the flames of sacrificeFrom the marble shrines did rise,As to pierce the dome of goldWhere Apollo spoke of old.

Sun-girt City, thou hast beenOcean's child, and then his queen;Now is come a darker day,And thou soon must be his prey,If the power that raised thee hereHallow so thy watery bier.A less drear ruin then than now,With thy conquest-branded browStooping to the slave of slavesFrom thy throne, among the wavesWilt thou be, when the sea-mewFlies, as once before it flew,O'er thine isles depopulate,And all is in its ancient state,Save where many a palace gateWith green sea-flowers overgrownLike a rock of Ocean's own,Topples o'er the abandoned seaAs the tides change sullenly.The fisher on his watery way,Wandering at the close of day,Will spread his sail and seize his oarTill he pass the gloomy shore,Lest thy dead should, from their sleepBursting o'er the starlight deep,Lead a rapid masque of deathO'er the waters of his path.

Those who alone thy towers beholdQuivering through aereal gold,As I now behold them here,Would imagine not they wereSepulchres, where human forms,Like pollution-nourished worms,To the corpse of greatness cling,Murdered, and now mouldering:But if Freedom should awakeIn her omnipotence, and shakeFrom the Celtic Anarch's holdAll the keys of dungeons cold,Where a hundred cities lieChained like thee, ingloriously,Thou and all thy sister bandMight adorn this sunny land,Twining memories of old timeWith new virtues more sublime;If not, perish thou and they!--Clouds which stain truth's rising dayBy her sun consumed away--Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,In the waste of years and hours,From your dust new nations springWith more kindly blossoming.

Perish--let there only beFloating o'er thy hearthless seaAs the garment of thy skyClothes the world immortally,One remembrance, more sublimeThan the tattered pall of time,Which scarce hides thy visage wan;--That a tempest-cleaving SwanOf the songs of Albion,Driven from his ancestral streamsBy the might of evil dreams,Found a nest in thee; and OceanWelcomed him with such emotionThat its joy grew his, and sprungFrom his lips like music flungO'er a mighty thunder-fit,Chastening terror:--what though yetPoesy's unfailing River,Which through Albion winds foreverLashing with melodious waveMany a sacred Poet's grave,Mourn its latest nursling fled?What though thou with all thy deadScarce can for this fame repayAught thine own? oh, rather sayThough thy sins and slaveries foulOvercloud a sunlike soul?As the ghost of Homer clingsRound Scamander's wasting springs;As divinest Shakespeare's mightFills Avon and the world with lightLike omniscient power which heImaged 'mid mortality;As the love from Petrarch's urn,Yet amid yon hills doth burn,A quenchless lamp by which the heartSees things unearthly;--so thou art,Mighty spirit--so shall beThe City that did refuge thee.

Lo, the sun floats up the skyLike thought-winged Liberty,Till the universal lightSeems to level plain and height;From the sea a mist has spread,And the beams of morn lie deadOn the towers of Venice now,Like its glory long ago.By the skirts of that gray cloudMany-domed Padua proudStands, a peopled solitude,'Mid the harvest-shining plain,Where the peasant heaps his grainIn the garner of his foe,And the milk-white oxen slowWith the purple vintage strain,Heaped upon the creaking wain,That the brutal Celt may swillDrunken sleep with savage will;And the sickle to the swordLies unchanged, though many a lord,Like a weed whose shade is poison,Overgrows this region's foison,Sheaves of whom are ripe to comeTo destruction's harvest-home:Men must reap the things they sow,Force from force must ever flow,Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woeThat love or reason cannot changeThe despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua, thou within whose wallsThose mute guests at festivals,Son and Mother, Death and Sin,Played at dice for Ezzelin,Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"And Sin cursed to lose the wager,But Death promised, to assuage her,That he would petition forHer to be made Vice-Emperor,When the destined years were o'er,Over all between the PoAnd the eastern Alpine snow,Under the mighty Austrian.Sin smiled so as Sin only can,And since that time, ay, long before,Both have ruled from shore to shore,--That incestuous pair, who followTyrants as the sun the swallow,As Repentance follows Crime,And as changes follow Time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,Padua, now no more is burning;Like a meteor, whose wild wayIs lost over the grave of day,It gleams betrayed and to betray:Once remotest nations cameTo adore that sacred flame,When it lit not many a hearthOn this cold and gloomy earth:Now new fires from antique lightSpring beneath the wide world's might;But their spark lies dead in thee,Trampled out by Tyranny.As the Norway woodman quells,In the depth of piny dells,One light flame among the brakes,While the boundless forest shakes,And its mighty trunks are tornBy the fire thus lowly born:The spark beneath his feet is dead,He starts to see the flames it fedHowling through the darkened skyWith a myriad tongues victoriously,And sinks down in fear: so thou,O Tyranny, beholdest nowLight around thee, and thou hearestThe loud flames ascend, and fearest:Grovel on the earth; ay, hideIn the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now:'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,When a soft and purple mistLike a vaporous amethyst,Or an air-dissolved starMingling light and fragrance, farFrom the curved horizon's boundTo the point of Heaven's profound,Fills the overflowing sky;And the plains that silent lieUnderneath, the leaves unsoddenWhere the infant Frost has troddenWith his morning-winged feet,Whose bright print is gleaming yet;And the red and golden vines,Piercing with their trellised linesThe rough, dark-skirted wilderness;The dun and bladed grass no less,Pointing from this hoary towerIn the windless air; the flowerGlimmering at my feet; the lineOf the olive-sandalled ApennineIn the south dimly islanded;And the Alps, whose snows are spreadHigh between the clouds and sun;And of living things each one;And my spirit which so longDarkened this swift stream of song,--Interpenetrated lieBy the glory of the sky:Be it love, light, harmony,Odour, or the soul of allWhich from Heaven like dew doth fall,Or the mind which feeds this versePeopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noonAutumn's evening meets me soon,Leading the infantine moon,And that one star, which to herAlmost seems to ministerHalf the crimson light she bringsFrom the sunset's radiant springs:And the soft dreams of the morn(Which like winged winds had borneTo that silent isle, which liesMid remembered agonies,The frail bark of this lone being)Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,And its ancient pilot, Pain,Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must beIn the sea of Life and Agony:Other spirits float and fleeO'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,On some rock the wild wave wraps,With folded wings they waiting sitFor my bark, to pilot itTo some calm and blooming cove,Where for me, and those I love,May a windless bower be built,Far from passion, pain, and guilt,In a dell mid lawny hills,Which the wild sea-murmur fills,And soft sunshine, and the soundOf old forests echoing round,And the light and smell divineOf all flowers that breathe and shine:We may live so happy there,That the Spirits of the Air,Envying us, may even enticeTo our healing ParadiseThe polluting multitude;But their rage would be subduedBy that clime divine and calm,And the winds whose wings rain balmOn the uplifted soul, and leavesUnder which the bright sea heaves;While each breathless intervalIn their whisperings musicalThe inspired soul suppliesWith its own deep melodies;And the love which heals all strifeCircling, like the breath of life,All things in that sweet abodeWith its own mild brotherhood,They, not it, would change; and soonEvery sprite beneath the moonWould repent its envy vain,And the earth grow young again.