Inherit they a sheep-hook or a sceptre,
Much to be grateful for; but most has he,
Born in that middle sphere, that temperate zone,
Where Knowledge lights his lamp, there most secure,
And Wisdom comes, if ever, she who dwells
Above the clouds, above the firmament,
That Seraph sitting in the heaven of heavens.
What men most covet, wealth, distinction, power,
Are baubles nothing worth, that only serve
To rouse us up, as children in the schools
Are roused up to exertion. The reward
Is in the race we run, not in the prize;
And they, the few, that have it ere they earn it,
Having, by favour or inheritance,
These dangerous gifts placed in their idle hands,
And all that should await on worth well tried,
All in the glorious days of old reserved
For manhood most mature or reverend age,
Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride
That glows in him who on himself relies,
Entering the lists of life.
THEY stand between the mountains and the sea;1
Awful memorials, but of whom we know not!
The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck;
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak,
Points to the work of magic and moves on.
Time was they stood along the crowded street,
1 The temples of Pæstum are three in number; and have survived, nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concerning them; but they must have existed now between two and three thousand years.
Temples of Gods! and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice!
Time was perhaps the third was sought for Justice;
And here the accuser stood, and there the accused;
And here the judges sate, and heard, and judged.
All silent now!-as in the ages past,
Trodden under foot and mingled, dust with dust.
How many centuries did the sun go round
From MOUNT ALBURNUS to the TYRRHENE sea,
While, by some spell rendered invisible,
Or, if approached, approached by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remained
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,
Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that Nature had resumed her right,
And taken to herself what man renounced ;
No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung or branching fern;
Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure
From my youth upward have I longed to tread
This classic ground-And am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.1
The air is sweet with violets, running wild?
Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals;
Sweet as when TULLY, writing down his thoughts,
Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost,3
(Turning to thee, divine Philosophy,
Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul,)
Sailed slowly by, two thousand years ago,
For ATHENS; when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the PÆSTAN gardens, slacked her course.
On as he moved along the level shore,
These temples, in their splendour eminent.
Mid arcs and obelisks, and domes and towers,
Reflecting back the radiance of the west,
Well might he dream of Glory !-Now, coiled up,
The serpent sleeps within them; the she-wolf
Suckles her young: and, as alone I stand
In this, the nobler pile, the elements
Of earth and air its only floor and roof,
Spartacus. See Plutarch in the Life of Crassus.
2 The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. Martial mentions them with the honey of Hybla.
3 The Introduction to his treatise on Glory. (Cic. ad Att. xvi. 6.) For an account of the loss of that treatise, see Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Senilium, xv. 1, and Bayle, Dict., in Alcyonius.
How solemn is the stillness! Nothing stirs
Save the shrill-voiced cicala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the fluted shaft with short quick spring,
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.
In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries,
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confused,
Athwart the innumerable columns flung,)
In such an hour he came, who saw and told,
Led by the mighty Genius of the Place.1
Walls of some capital city first appeared,
Half raised, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn;
-And what within them? what but in the midst
These Three in more than their original gran deur,
And, round about, no stone upon another?
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements.
'Tis said a stranger in the days of old ·
(Some say a DORIAN, some a SYBARITE;
But distant things are ever lost in clouds),-
'Tis said a stranger came, and, with his plough,
Traced out the site; and PoSIDONIA rose,2
Severely great, NEPTUNE the tutelar God;
A HOMER'S language murmuring in her streets,
And in her haven many a mast from TYRE.
Then came another, an unbidden guest.
He knocked and entered with a train in arms;
And all was changed, her very name and language!
The TYRIAN merchant, shipping at his door
1 They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century.
2 Originally a Greek City under that name, and afterwards a Roman City under the name of Pæstum. It was surprised and destroyed by the Saracens at the beginning of the tenth century.
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