No More Learning

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,[434][18. H. ]
Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore:[435][19. H. ]
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,[436]
Proscribed the Bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown[437][20. H. ]
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His Life, his Fame, his Grave, though rifled--not thine own. [438]

LVIII.

Boccaccio[439] to his parent earth bequeathed[my][21. H. ]
His dust,--and lies it not her Great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? [440]
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for _whom! _

LIX.
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Caesar's pageant,[441] shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[mz]
The immortal Exile;--Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps. [442]

LX.

What is her Pyramid of precious stones? [22. H. ]
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? [443] the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are Mausoleums of the Muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where Sculpture with her rainbow Sister vies;[444]
There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;
For I have been accustomed to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
Calls for my Spirit's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields

LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake,[445] in the defiles
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,[na]
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er.

LXIII.

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save Carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An Earthquake[446] reeled unheededly away! [23. H.