LXXVIII.
Loves of unhappy end in imagery
Of gold or jewelled bands he saw exprest;
Then eagles’ talons, the authority
With which great lords their delegates invest:
Bellows filled every nook, the fume and fee
Wherein the favourites of kings are blest:
Given to those Ganymedes that have their hour,
And reft, when faded is their vernal flower.
LXXIX.
O’erturned, here ruined town and castle lies,
With all their wealth: “The symbols” (said his guide)
“Of treaties and of those conspiracies,
“Which their conductors seemed so ill to hide.”
Serpents with female faces, felonies
Of coiners and of robbers, he descried;
Next broken bottles saw of many sorts,
The types of servitude in sorry courts.
LXXX.
He marks a mighty pool of porridge spilled,
And asks what in that symbol should be read,
And hears ’twas charity, by sick men willed
For distribution, after they were dead.
He passed a heap of flowers, that erst distilled
Sweet savours, and now noisome odours shed;
The gift (if it may lawfully be said)
Which Constantine to good Sylvester made[13].
