ROMAN RUINS. How could Rome live so long, and now be dead? On martyr-blood, his bare and crumbling bones? Stranger! if thou a docile heart dost bring ANTIQUES. PLATEN. FREE! let us free,-throw open the doors, lay open the presses, Here in the dark and the dust is it seemly for us to be dwelling? What we, and where we have been, oh! remember, and give us your pity. Once this rare old Vase was the pride of the gardens of Egypt, And Cleopatra herself bade her courtiers fill it with : myrtle : This so daintily carved, this duplicate layer of Onyx, I, God Hermes, stood in the hall of Cæsar Augustus,— o'er me; Now have Ye piled us together and ranged us in cruel confusion, Each one pressing his fellow, and each of us shading his brother, None in a fitting abode, in the life-giving play of the sunshine! Wearying even the eyes of gaping and vain " cognoscenti," Here in disorder we lie, like desolate bones in a charnel, Waking, in those that can feel, deep sense of sorrowful yearning For the magnificent days, when, as all but alive, we were honoured. Ye too,―cull ye no roses, no fresh-blowing braids, to be wreathed Round the Etrurian vase and brow of the Parian marble? Ye too, have ye no temples, no pleachèd arcades in your gardens, Where ye can take us, and plant us, all near the unperishing heavens, After our own sweet wont, to the joy of the pious beholder? ON A SCENE IN TUSCANY. WHAT good were it to dim the pleasure-glow, While we enjoy, what matters what we know? What tender love-sick looks on us below Those Mountains cast! how courteously the Trees For the thick Vine to fill and overflow ! TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, AGED NINE YEARS. SWEET, serious Child,-strange Boy! I fain would know Which is the especial charm of infancy : For had the formal bondage of a school Checked the gay outgrowth of thy vernal years, Encumbered thy light wings with vulgar rule, And dimmed the blossoms in thy cheeks with tears,— Thou mightst have been as grave, as still, as now, But not with that calm smile, that placid brow. Nor has the knowledge of dull manly things, And made thee conscious of a world of crime ; With all thy earnest looks, as spirit-free As ever infant dancing down the lea. |