CVII.
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown[1]
Matted and massed together—hillocks heaped
On what were chambers—arch crushed, column strown
In fragments—choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,[2]
Deeming it midnight:—Temples—Baths—or Halls?
Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls—
- ↑ [Compare Rogers's Italy: "Rome" (Poems, 1852), ii. 169—
"Or climb the Palatine, ····· Long while the seat of Rome, hereafter found
Less than enough (so monstrous was the brood
Engendered there, so Titan-like) to lodge
One in his madness; and inscribe my name—
My name and date, on some broad aloe-leaf
That shoots and spreads within those very walls
Where Virgil read aloud his tale divine,
When his voice faltered and a mother wept
Tears of delight!"[a]And compare Shelley's Poetical Works, 1895, iii. 276—
"Rome has fallen; ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying."]
↑ a. [At the words Tu Marcellus eris, etc. (vide Tib. Cl. Donatus, Life of Virgil (Virg., Opera), Leeuwarden, 1627, vol. i.).]
- ↑ ——wherein have creeped
The Reptiles which——
or, Scorpion and blindworm——.—[MS. M. erased.] - ↑ The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brickwork. Nothing has been told—nothing can be told—to satisfy the belief of any but the Roman
