No More Learning

But soon as the sun's fierce burning light

Singed the wings that had abased the Earth,

Earth sent forth, out of her weighty mass,

That ancient horror that assails the right.

Then was the German raven seen, disguised,

Echoing the Roman eagle in the skies,

And once again towards Heaven spread

These brave hills once reduced to dust,

No longer fearing lightning overhead,

Borne by that eagle on the stormy gust.

XVIII

These great heaps of stone, these walls you see,

Were once enclosures of the open field:

And these brave palaces that to Time must yield,

Were shepherd's huts in some past century.

Then shepherds took the badge of royalty,

And the stout labourer the sword did wield:

The Consuls' power was annually revealed,

Till six month terms won greater majesty,

Which, made perpetual, accrued such power

That the Imperial Eagle seized the hour:

But Heaven, opposing such aggrandisement,

Handed that power to Peter's successor,

Who, called a shepherd, fated to reign there,

Shows that all returns to its commencement.

XIX

All perfection Heaven showers on us,

All imperfection born beneath the skies,

All that regales our spirits and our eyes,

And all those things that devour our pleasures:

All those ills that strip our age of treasures,

All the good the centuries might devise,

Rome in ancestral times secured as prize,

Like Pandora's box, enclosed the measure.

But Destiny, untangling this chaos,

In which all good and evil once were lost,

Has since ensured the heavenly virtues,

Flying skywards, left the vices behind,

Which, till this day, remain here confined,

Concealed within these ruined avenues.

XX

Exactly as the rain-filled cloud is seen

Lifting earthly vapours through the air,

Forming a bow, and then drinking there

By plunging deep in Tethys' hoary sheen,

Next, climbing again where it has been,

With bellying shadow darkening everywhere,

Till finally it bursts in lightning glare,

And rain, or snow, or hail shrouds the scene:

This city, that was once a shepherd's field,

Rising by degrees, such power did wield,

She made herself the queen of sea and land,

Till helpless to sustain that huge excess,

Her power dispersed, so we might understand

That all, one day, must come to nothingness.

XXI

She whom both Pyrrhus and Libyan Mars

Found no way to tame, this proud city,

That with a courage forged in adversity,

Sustained the shock of endless wars,

Though her ship, plagued at the source

By great waves, felt the world's enmity,

None ever saw the reefs of adversity

Wreak havoc on her fortunate course:

But, the object of her virtue failing,

Her power opposed its own flailing,

Like the voyager whom a cruel gale

Has long since separated from the shore,

Driven now by the storm's wild roar,

And shipwrecked there, when all efforts fail.

XXII

When this brave city, honouring the Latin name,

Bounded on the Danube, in Africa,

Among the tribes along the Thames' shore,

And where the rising sun ascends in flame,

Her own nurslings stirred, in mutinous game

Against her very self, the spoils of war,

So dearly won from all the world before,

That same world's spoil suddenly became:

So when the Great Year its course has run,

And twenty six thousand years are done,

The elements freed from Nature's accord,

Those seeds that are the source of everything,

Will return in Time to their first discord,

Chaos' eternal womb their presence hiding.

XXIII

Oh how wise that man was, in his caution,

Who counselled, so his race might not moulder,

Nor Rome's citizens be spoiled by leisure,

That Carthage should be spared destruction!

He foresaw how the brave Roman nation,

Impatient of the blandishments of pleasure

Once sated with vain amusements' measure,

Would turn to civil war as a distraction.

For in a people pledged to idleness,

Like swollen tumour in diseased flesh,

Ambition is engendered readily.

And so it chanced, for envious pride,

That no peer or superior could abide,

Made Pompey Caesar's fated enemy.

XXIV

If that blind fury that engenders wars,

Fails to rouse the creatures of a kind,

Whether swift bird aloft or fleeting hind,

Whether equipped with scales or sharpened claws,

What ardent Fury in her pincers' jaws

Gripped your hearts, so poisoned the mind,

That intent on mutual cruelty, we find,

Into your own entrails your own blade bores?

Was this, Romans, your harsh destiny,

Or some old sin, with discordant mutiny,

Working on you its eternal vengeance?
The gods denying, in just indignation,

Your walls, bloodied by that ancient instance

Of fraternal strife, a sure foundation.

XXV

Would that I might possess the Thracian lyre,

To wake from Hades, and their idle pose,

Those old Caesars, and the shades of those,

Who once raised this ancient city higher:

Or that I had Amphion's to inspire,

And with sweet harmony these stones enclose

To quicken them again, where they once rose,

Ausonian glory conjuring from its pyre:

Or that with skilful pencil I might draw

The portrait of these palaces once more,

With the spirit of some high Virgil filled;

I would attempt, inflamed by my ardour,

To recreate with the pen's slight power,

That which our own hands could never build.

XXVI

Who would demonstrate Rome's true grandeur,

In all her vast dimensions, all her might,

Her length and breadth, and all her depth and height

Needs no line or lead, compass or measure:

He only need draw a circle, at his leisure,

Round all that Ocean in his arms holds tight,

Be it where Sirius scorches with his light,

Or where the northerlies blow cold forever.

Rome was the world, and all the world is Rome.

If naming like things alike may bring it home,

The name of Rome why bother to employ?

Name but the land and sea, your map unfurled,

Since world, itself, for Rome, you may deploy,

For a map of Rome's a map of all the world.

XXVII

You, by Rome astonished, who gaze here

On ancient pride, once threatening the skies,

These old palaces, where the brave hills rise,

Walls, archways, baths, the temples that appear:

Judge, as you view these ruins, shattered, sere,

All that injurious Time's devoured: the wise

Architect and mason, their plans devise

Still from these fragments, these patterns clear:

Then note how Rome, still, from day to day,

Rummaging through her ancient decay,

Renews herself with hosts of sacred things:

You'd think the Roman spirit yet alive,

With destined hands continuing to strive,

That to these dusty ruins, new life brings.

XXVIII

He who has seen a great oak dry and dead,

Bearing some trophy as an ornament,

Whose roots from earth are almost rent,

Though to the heavens it still lifts its head;

More than half-bowed towards its final bed,

Showing its naked boughs and fibres bent,

While, leafless now, its heavy crown is leant

Support by a gnarled trunk, its sap long bled;

And though at the first strong wind it must fall,

And many young oaks are rooted within call,

Alone among the devout populace is revered:

Who such an oak has seen, let him consider,

That, among cities which have flourished here,

This old honoured dust was the most honoured.

XXIX

All that the Egyptians once devised,

All that Greece, with its Corinthian,

Ionic, Attic, and its Dorian

Ornament, in its temples apprised,

All that the art of Lysippus comprised,

The hand of Apelles, or the Phidian,

That used to adorn this city, and this land,

Grandeur that even Heaven once surprised,

All that Athens in its wisdom showed,

All that from richest Asia ever flowed,

All that from Africa strange and new was sent,

Was here on view. O wonder now unfurled!

Living Rome, the ornament of the world,

Now dead, remains the world's monument.

XXX

As the sown field its fresh greenness shows,

From that greenness the green shoot is born,

From the shoot there flowers an ear of corn,

From the ear, yellow grain, sun-ripened glows:

And as, in due season, the farmer mows

The waving locks, from the gold furrow shorn

Lays them in lines, and to the light of dawn

On the bare field, a thousand sheaves he shows:

So the Roman Empire grew by degrees,

Till barbarous power brought it to its knees,

Leaving only these ancient ruins behind,

That all and sundry pillage: as those who glean,

Following step by step, the leavings find,

That after the farmer's passage may be seen.

XXXI

That we see nothing but an empty waste

Where one was seen the pride of all the earth,

Is no fault of yours, you men of other birth,

Who Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Ganges taste.

Africa, Spain, neither are you disgraced,

Nor that race that holds the English firth,

Nor, by the French Rhine, soldiers of worth,

Nor Germany with other warriors graced.

O, Civil Fury, you alone are the cause,

In Macedonian fields sowing new wars,

Arming Pompey against Caesar there,

So that achieving the rich crown of all,

Roman grandeur, prospering everywhere,

Might tumble down in more disastrous fall.

XXIX

Do you have hopes that posterity

Will read you, my Verse, for evermore?