Who found a more than common Votary there
Too much adoring—whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful Thought, and softly bodied forth.
CXVI.
The mosses of thy Fountain[1] still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
- ↑ [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which is situated a little to the left of the Via Appia, about two miles to the south-east of the Porta di Sebastiano: "Here, beside the Almo rivulet [now the Maranna d. Caffarella], is a ruined nymphæum ... which was called the 'Grotto of Egeria,' till ... the discovery of the true site of the Porta Capena fixed that of the grotto within the walls.... It is now known that this nymphæum ... belonged to the suburban villa called Triopio of Herodes Atticus." The actual site of Egeria's fountain is in the grounds of the Villa Mattei, to the south-east of the Cælian, and near the Porta Metronia. "It was buried, in 1867, by the military engineers, while building their new hospital near S. Stefano Rotondo" (Prof. Lanciani).
In lines 5-9 Byron is recalling Juvenal's description of the valley of Egeria, under the mistaken impression that here, and not by "dripping Capena," was the trysting-place of Numa and the goddess. Juvenal has accompanied the seer Umbritius, who was leaving Rome for Capua, as far as the Porta Capena; and while the one waggon, with its slender store of goods, is being loaded, the friends take a stroll—
"In vallem Egeriæ descendimus et speluncas
Dissimiles veris. Quanto præstantius esset
Numen aquæ, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"Sat. I. iii. 17-20.The grove and shrine of the sacred fountain, which had
beside himself with longing for an impossible ideal. Compare stanza cxxii. line 7—
"The unreached Paradise of our despair."
Compare, too, Kubla Khan, lines 52, 53—
"For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."]
