Page:Corinne - L. E. L.pdf/3

    By genius Rome subdued the world, then reign'd
A queen by liberty. The Roman mind
Set its own stamp upon the universe;
And, when barbarian hordes whelm'd Italy,
Then darkness was entire upon the earth.

    Italia reappear’d, and with her rose
Treasures divine, brought by the wandering Greeks;
To her were then reveal'd the laws of Heaven.
Her daring children made discovery
Of a new hemisphere: Queen still, she held
Thought's sceptre; but that laurel’d sceptre made
Ungrateful subjects.

    Imagination gave her back the world
Which she had lost. Painters and poets shaped
Earth and Olympus, and a heaven and hell.
Her animating fire by Genius kept,
Far better guarded than the Pagan God’s,
Found not in Europe a Prometheus
To bear it from her.

    And wherefore am I at the Capitol?
Why should my lowly brow receive the crown
Which Petrarch wore? which yet suspended hangs
Where Tasso's funeral cypress mournful waves:
Why? oh, my countrymen! but that you love
Glory so well, that you repay its search
Almost like its success.

    Now, if you love that glory which too oft
Chooses its victims from its vanquishers,
Those which itself has crown'd; think, and be proud
Of days which saw the perish’d Arts reborn.
Your Dante! Homer of the Christian age,
The sacred poet of Faith’s mysteries,—
Hero of thought,—whose gloomy genius plunged
In Styx, and pierced to hell; and whose deep soul
Was like the abyss it fathom’d.

    Italia! as she was in days of power
Revived in Dante: such a spirit stirr'd
In old republics: bard and warrior too,
He lit the fire of action 'mid the dead,
Till e'en his shadows had more vigorous life
Than real existence; still were they pursued
By earthly memories: passions without aim
Gnaw'd at their heart, still fever'd by the past;