No More Learning

Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.

CXLIV.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there--
When the stars twinkle through the loops of Time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,[pa]
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head--[512]
When the light shines serene but doth not glare--
Then in this magic circle raise the dead;--
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread. [pb]

CXLV.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:[513]
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World. " From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon! --pride of Rome! [pc]

CXLVII.

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect!
with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close. [515]

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light[516]
What do I gaze on? Nothing--Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight--
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:[pd]
It is not so--I see them full and plain--
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare? [pe]

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where _on_ the heart and _from_ the heart we took
Our first and sweetest nurture--when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook[pf]
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives[pg]
Man knows not--when from out its cradled nook
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves--
What may the fruit be yet? --I know not--Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,
The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth:--No--he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side
Drink--drink, and live--Old Man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the Milky Way[517]
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest Nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy Sire's heart, replenishing its source[ph]
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the Universe.

CLII.

Turn to the Mole[518] which Hadrian reared on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity--
Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
To build for Giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this Dome: How smiles
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,[pi]
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!