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Of búsy, gay, key-jíngling Kellnerin,
Throws down his knapsack on Gast-Stube table,
And after short delay is helped to the best
Saúsage, stewed veál, and wine the inn affords;
Nor is this all; finds when he goes upstairs
His béd, though nothing wider, has in length
Gained on the measure of his German crib
Some good three inches, cleaner far besides
And better furnished, but for greater width
Thán his cramp German crib's spare thirty inches
He must have patience till he leaves behind him
Not Germany alone but North Tyról,
And figs, vines, peaches, pomegranates and olives
And brighter suns and warmer airs announce
The European Eden, South Tyról.

From Vál Ampezzo and the belfry Glockner
And whére in crystal vase is still preserved
The drop of the hóly blood, I take my way
With the descending Drave into Carinthia's
East-trénding valley-land flanked North and South
By mány a snow-clad Alp and ruined castle,
And sown by many a diligent peasant's hand

With mélons, maize, hemp, bere, oats, beans and barley.
I rúbbed mine eyes and wondered was 't a dream
When I beheld once more the female face

Óval and seémly, such as I'd been used

To admire in England, Scotland and dear Ireland,
And hád in vaín sought through all sprawling-mouthed,
Broad, próminent cheekboned, cat-eyed Germany.
But handsome though they be, Carinthia's maids
Detain not lóng my faithless, wandering steps,
And on the banks of Téssin or old Tyber
Or stretched at ease upon the sunny slopes

O'erhanging Spezzia's palms and placid bay,
Behold me wooing soon a lovelier beauty.

I like thee, Italy, and I like thee not;
Thoú that a thousand years thine iron sceptre
Laid'st heavy on the neck of human kind.
From western Tagus to far eastern Ganges,
And from the Picts' wall to the burning Line,
Thine hour of retribution 's come at last

And crushed beneath the tyrant's heel thou liest
Writhing unpitied, not again to rise.

First waned thy private morals, then thy public;
Thy singleness and honesty of purpose,
Thy válor, heroism, selfdenial;

And though, of life tenacious, thy religion,
Clád in a different mantle and with features
Adjústed in the mirror of the times,

Síts in her ancient seat and fain would thence
Rúle as of old the world and act the God,
A tíme is coming when even Róme's religion
Must tumble down and perish like Rome's State,
Or dón another mantle, other features,

And spreading out with one hand a new forged
And lying patent, teár down with the other
From the flagstaff the cross, and round a cone,
Triángle, square, trapezoid or circle,
Rálly new hosts of wonderworkers, martyrs,
Voices and signs and omens and believers.
Such shadowy prospect, far the field outlying
Óf the myopic vision of the vulgar,

Ópens before my strained eye in the dim
But hourly clear and clearer growing future,
And intermediate lying a vast plain

Cóvered with camps and bivouacs and battles

And charging horse and foot, and dead and dying, Defeat and victory, prisoners and pursuit,

And búrning cities villages and cornfields,

Rápine and waste and all the whole heart of man;
And groans assail mine ears and shouts of triumph,
And criés of wretches broken on the wheel
Slow inch by inch, or in the fire consuming,

Or rótting underground in damp, dark dungeons;
And, mixed with these, bells ringing, organs pealing,
And hymns in chorus sung to the new God,
And preachers' voices loud anathematising
Christ and his cross, rude barbarous superstition

Óf a benighted, Gód-deserted age.

Turn, weary ear and shocked, disheartened eye,
And seek refreshment in the happier past;
Alás! there's nó refreshment in the past
For eár or eye; hórrors and woeful sounds

And sights of blood fill the whole backward distance:
Állah, Christ, Jove, Jehova, Baal and Isis,

With all their prophets, miracles and priests,
Sheiks, Popes, Druids, Patriarchs, and Bonzes
In battle melée charge and countercharge,
Cónquerors alternate, and alternate conquered
History, begóne! henceforth let no man write
The annals of his kind, or dissipate

The sweet and fair illusion that on earth
Sómetime and somewhere Charity has lived,
And mén not always when they used God's name
Had fraud or blood or rapine in their hearts.
Stage upon which so many stirring scenes
Óf the world's history have been enacted,

Nót without áwe I tread thee here where Brutus
Did his great deed, where Marcus Tullius pleaded,
Where Brénnus threw into the wavering scale

His sword's weight; here where Clodius brawled, where wronged Virginius' knife ended Decemvirates;

Hére where into the delicate, fine ears

Óf the world's máster, the Venusian bard

And Mántuan poured the honey of their song;
Hére where, resuscitated by the sculptor's
Life-giving chisel, round about me stand
In all their ancient majesty, reinstalled,
The land's pristine possessors, heroes heroines
Góds Demigods philosophers and bards,
Hére is no púppet show no village playhouse.
So far I wrote or thought, when on mine eyes
Fell slúmber like a veil, and lo! I'm seated
Ón the top bench of a vast circular building,
Úp next the awning; on each hand all round
Rome's ártizans, on the stone benches crowded,
Look down with strained necks into the Arena;
I too look down past the filled tiers and wedges,
Pást the dense róws of senators and knights,
Procónsuls, Prétors, Heads municipal,

And foreign princes in costumes outlandish,

And délegates from the round world's three thirds,
And pást the Podium where on gold and crimson
The Emperor lolled, the Fasces at his back,
Ínto th' Aréna, where in the midst I saw,
Náked except the loins and all defenceless,
An old man and a youth together standing;
Ánd to the question who or what they were
Received for answer from those sitting near me:
"A father and his son condemned to death
For spreading blasphemous, Jewish superstitions
Among the vulgar, teaching them one Christ,
A Jewish rebel, was their rightful Cesar,
Jóve's bastard by a fair Alcmena Jewess."

As thús I heard, two glittering swords unsheathed
Were thrown into the midst, and a loud voice
Proclaimed the Cesar's mercy to that one
Óf the two culprits, whether son or father,
Who should the other slay in single fight,
Thére in the présence of assembled Rome.
Cold hórror chilled my blood as I beheld
Fáther and són, at the same instant armed,
Brándish the weapons: "Hold," I cried, "hold, hold" -
And wóke, and found me in the Coliseum,
Seated upon the ruined, crumbling Podium,
Before me and on either side Christ's chapels
And kneeling worshippers, overhead the cross.
I knów not, Ítaly, whether thou art fairest
Ín thy blue sky, translucent lakes, broad rivers,
Thy pébbly half-moon bays and hoary headlands,
Thine irrigated vales of pasture green,

Thy mantling vines, tall cypresses, gray olives,
Thy stone-pines, hólmoaks dark, and laurels noble,
Ór in the intérior of thy marble halls

Where every pillar, every flag 1 tread on,
Has félt Bramante's or Palladio's chisel,
And every wall and every ceiling glows
Fresh with the tints of Raphael or Guercino;

But well I know that where thou shouldst be fairest

Thou art most foul; in all the sweet relations

Of life domestic, Italy! thou art naught:.
Thou know'st no happy fireside, no tea table;
About the móther, in the evening, never
Gáther the children whether sons or daughters;
No book is read, no family instruction;
Th' example of the father leads the son
To the Casino and the coffeehouse,

The mother, seated on her throne the sofa,

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