No More Learning

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?
Do you have hopes the lyre can soar

So high as to win immortality?

If what's beneath the sky knew eternity,

The monuments, whose form I had you draw,

Not on paper but in marble, porphyry,

Would yet preserve their live antiquity.

Yet may you never cease to echo sweetly,

Lyre, that great Apollo deigned to grant me:

For if Time fails to topple you from place,

You may boast, however slight a thing

You are, you were first, in French, to sing

The ancient glory of the toga'd race.

FINIS

Joachim du Bellay

'Joachim du Bellay'
Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - P. L. Jacob (p495, 1878)
Internet Archive Book Images



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