CANTO IV.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
391
She saw her glories star by star expire,[1]
And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol;[2] far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
LXXXI.
The double night of ages, and of her,[3]
Night's daughter, Ignorance,[4] hath wrapt and wrap
- ↑ She saw her glories one by one expire.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ [Compare Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, "Prophecy of Capys," stanza xxx.—
"Blest and thrice blest the Roman
Who sees Rome's brightest day,
Who sees that long victorious pomp
Wind down the Sacred Way,
And through the bellowing Forum,
And round the Suppliant's Grove,
Up to the everlasting gates
Of Capitolian Jove."] - ↑ The double night of Ruin——.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ [The construction is harsh and puzzling. Apparently the subject of "hath wrapt" is the "double night of ages;" the subjects of "wrap," the "night of ages" and the "night of Ignorance;" but, even so, the sentence is ambiguous. Not less amazing is the confusion of metaphors. Rome is a "desert," through which we steer, mounted, presumably, on a camel—the "ship of the desert." Mistaken associations are, as it were, stumbling-blocks; and no sooner have we verified an association, discovered a ruined temple in the exact site which Livy's "pictured page" has assigned to it—a discovery as welcome to the antiquarian as water to the thirsty traveller—than our theory is upset, and we perceive that we have been deluded by a mirage.]
