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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