The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore

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[5] This fanciful allegory is the subject of a picture by Titian in the
possession of the Marquis Cambian at Turin, whose collection, though
small, contains some beautiful specimens of all the great masters.

[6] As Paul Veronese gave but little into the _beau ideal_, his women
may be regarded as pretty close imitations of the living models which
Venice afforded in his time.

[7] The Marriage of Cana.

[8] "Certain it is [as Arthur Young truly and feelingly says] one now and
then meets with terrible eyes in Italy."

EXTRACT IX.

Venice.

_The English to be met with everywhere.--Alps and Threadneedle
Street.--The Simplon and the Stocks.--Rage for travelling.--Blue Stockings
among the Wahabees.--Parasols and Pyramids.--Mrs. Hopkins and the Wall of
China_.

And is there then no earthly place,
Where we can rest in dream Elysian,
Without some curst, round English face,
Popping up near to break the vision?
Mid northern lakes, mid southern vines,
Unholy cits we're doomed to meet;
Nor highest Alps nor Apennines
Are sacred from Threadneedle Street!

If up the Simplon's path we wind,
Fancying we leave this world behind,
Such pleasant sounds salute one's ear
As--"Baddish news from 'Change, my dear--
"The funds--(phew I curse this ugly hill)--
"Are lowering fast--(what, higher still?)--
"And--(zooks, we're mounting up to heaven!)--
"Will soon be down to sixty-seven."

Go where we may--rest where we will.
Eternal London haunts us still.
The trash of Almack's or Fleet Ditch--
And scarce a pin's head difference _which_--
Mixes, tho' even to Greece we run,
With every rill from Helicon!
And if this rage for travelling lasts,
If Cockneys of all sects and castes,
Old maidens, aldermen, and squires,
_Will_ leave their puddings and coal fires,
To gape at things in foreign lands
No soul among them understands;
If Blues desert their coteries,
To show off 'mong the Wahabees;
If neither sex nor age controls,
Nor fear of Mamelukes forbids
Young ladies with pink parasols
To glide among the Pyramids--

Why, then, farewell all hope to find
A spot that's free from London-kind!
Who knows, if to the West we roam,
But we may find some _Blue_ "at home"
Among the Blacks of Carolina--
Or flying to the Eastward see
Some Mrs. HOPKINS taking tea
And toast upon the Wall of China!

EXTRACT X.

Mantua.

_Verses of Hippolyta to her Husband_.

They tell me thou'rt the favored guest
Of every fair and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
No voice like thine to breathe the song.
And none could guess, so gay thou art,
That thou and I are far apart.
Alas, alas! how different flows,
With thee and me the time away!
Not that I wish thee sad, heaven knows--
Still if thou canst, be light and gay;
I only know that without thee
The sun himself is dark for me.

Do I put on the jewels rare
Thou'st always loved to see me wear?
Do I perfume the locks that thou
So oft hast braided o'er my brow,
Thus deckt thro' festive crowds to run,
And all the assembled world to see,--
All but the one, the absent one,
Worth more than present worlds to me!
No, nothing cheers this widowed heart--
My only joy from thee apart,
From thee thyself, is sitting hours
And days before thy pictured form--
That dream of thee, which Raphael's powers
Have made with all but life-breath warm!
And as I smile to it, and say
The words I speak to thee in play,
I fancy from their silent frame,
Those eyes and lips give back the same:
And still I gaze, and still they keep
Smiling thus on me--till I weep!
Our little boy too knows it well,
For there I lead him every day
And teach his lisping lips to tell
The name of one that's far away.
Forgive me, love, but thus alone
My time is cheered while thou art gone.

EXTRACT XI.

Florence.

No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.

Nor is't that pure _sentiment_ only they want,
Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;

That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even tho' the flush of the colors may fly,
The features still live in their first smiling truth;

That union where all that in Woman is kind,
With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into one--like the column, combined
Of the _strength_ of the shaft and the capital's _flowers_.

Of this--bear ye witness, ye wives, everywhere,
By the ARNO, the PO, by all ITALY'S streams--
Of this heart-wedded love, so delicious to share,
Not a husband hath even one glimpse in his dreams.

But it _is_ not this only;--born full of the light
Of a sun from whose fount the luxuriant festoons
Of these beautiful valleys drink lustre so bright
That beside him our suns of the north are but moons,--

We might fancy at least, like their climate they burned;
And that Love tho' unused in this region of spring
To be thus to a tame Household Deity turned,
Would yet be all soul when abroad on the wing.

And there _may_ be, there _are_ those explosions of heart
Which burst when the senses have first caught the flame;
Such fits of the blood as those climates impart,
Where Love is a sun-stroke that maddens the frame.

But that Passion which springs in the depth of the soul;
Whose beginnings are virginly pure as the source
Of some small mountain rivulet destined to roll
As a torrent ere long, losing peace in its course--

A course to which Modesty's struggle but lends
A more headlong descent without chance of recall;
But which Modesty even to the last edge attends,
And then throws a halo of tears round its fall!

This exquisite Passion--ay, exquisite, even
Mid the ruin its madness too often hath made,
As it keeps even then a bright trace of the heaven,
That heaven of Virtue from which it has strayed--

This entireness of love which can only be found,
Where Woman like something that's holy, watched over,
And fenced from her childhood with purity round,
Comes body and soul fresh as Spring to a lover!

Where not an eye answers, where not a hand presses,
Till spirit with spirit in sympathy move;
And the Senses asleep in their sacred recesses
Can only be reached thro' the temple of Love!--

This perfection of Passion-how can it be found,
Where the mystery Nature hath hung round the tie
By which souls are together attracted and bound,
Is laid open for ever to heart,
ear and eye;--

Where naught of that innocent doubt can exist,
That ignorance even than knowledge more bright,
Which circles the young like the morn's sunny mist,
And curtains them round in their own native light;--

Where Experience leaves nothing for Love to reveal,
Or for Fancy in visions to gleam o'er the thought:
But the truths which alone we would die to conceal
From the maiden's young heart are the only ones taught.

No, no, 'tis not here, howsoever we sigh,
Whether purely to Hymen's one planet we pray,
Or adore, like Sabaeans, each light of Love's sky,
Here is not the region to fix or to stray.

For faithless in wedlock, in gallantry gross,
Without honor to guard, to reserve, to restrain,
What have they a husband can mourn as a loss?
What have they a lover can prize as a gain?

EXTRACT XII.

Florence.

_Music in Italy.--Disappointed by it.--Recollections or other Times and
Friends.--Dalton.--Sir John Stevenson.--His Daughter.--Musical Evenings
together_.

If it be true that Music reigns,
Supreme, in ITALY'S soft shades,
'Tis like that Harmony so famous,
Among the spheres, which He of SAMOS
Declared had such transcendent merit
That not a soul on earth could hear it;
For, far as I have come--from Lakes,
Whose sleep the Tramontana breaks,
Thro' MILAN and that land which gave
The Hero of the rainbow vest[1]--
By MINCIO'S banks, and by that wave,
Which made VERONA'S bard so blest--
Places that (like the Attic shore,
Which rung back music when the sea
Struck on its marge) should be all o'er
Thrilling alive with melody--
I've heard no music--not a note
Of such sweet native airs as float
In my own land among the throng
And speak our nation's soul for song.

Nay, even in higher walks, where Art
Performs, as 'twere, the gardener's part,
And richer if not sweeter makes
The flowers she from the wild-hedge takes--
Even there, no voice hath charmed my ear,
No taste hath won my perfect praise,
Like thine, dear friend[2]--long, truly dear--
Thine, and thy loved OLIVIA'S lays.
She, always beautiful, and growing
Still more so every note she sings--
Like an inspired young Sibyl,[3] glowing
With her own bright imaginings!
And thou, most worthy to be tied
In music to her, as in love,
Breathing that language by her side,
All other language far above,
Eloquent Song--whose tones and words
In every heart find answering chords!

How happy once the hours we past,
Singing or listening all daylong,
Till Time itself seemed changed at last
To music, and we lived in song!
Turning the leaves of HAYDN o'er,
As quick beneath her master hand
They opened all their brilliant store,
Like chambers, touched by fairy wand;
Or o'er the page of MOZART bending,
Now by his airy warblings cheered,
Now in his mournful _Requiem_ blending
Voices thro' which the heart was heard.
And still, to lead our evening choir,
Was He invoked, thy loved-one's Sire[4]--
He who if aught of grace there be
In the wild notes I write or sing,
First smoothed their links of harmony,
And lent them charms they did not bring;--
He, of the gentlest, simplest heart,
With whom, employed in his sweet art,
(That art which gives this world of ours
A notion how they speak in heaven.)
I've past more bright and charmed hours
Than all earth's wisdom could have given.
Oh happy days, oh early friends,
How Life since then hath lost its flowers!
But yet--tho' Time _some_ foliage rends,
The stem, the Friendship, still is ours;
And long may it endure, as green
And fresh as it hath always been!

How I have wandered from my theme!
But where is he, that could return
To such cold subjects from a dream,
Thro' which these best of feelings burn?--
Not all the works of Science, Art,
Or Genius in this world are worth
One genuine sigh that from the heart
Friendship or Love draws freshly forth.

[1] Bermago--the birthplace, it is said, of Harlequin.

[2] Edward Tuite Dalton, the first husband of Sir John Stevenson's
daughter, the late Marchioness of Headfort.

[3] Such as those of Domenichino in the Palazza Borghese, at the
Capitol, etc.

[4] Sir John Stevenson.

EXTRACT XIII.

Rome.

_Reflections on reading Du Cerceau's Account of the Conspiracy of
Rienzi, in 1347.--The Meeting of the Conspirators on the Night of the 19th
of May.--Their Procession in the Morning to the Capitol.--Rienzi's
Speech_.

'Twas a proud moment--even to hear the words
Of Truth and Freedom mid these temples breathed,
And see once more the Forum shine with swords
In the Republic's sacred name unsheathed--
That glimpse, that vision of a brighter day
For his dear ROME, must to a Roman be,
Short as it was, worth ages past away
In the dull lapse of hopeless slavery.

'Twas on a night of May, beneath that moon
Which had thro' many an age seen Time untune
The strings of this Great Empire, till it fell
From his rude hands, a broken, silent shell--
The sound of the church clock near ADRIAN'S Tomb
Summoned the warriors who had risen for ROME,
To meet unarmed,--with none to watch them there,
But God's own eye,--and pass the night in prayer.
Holy beginning of a holy cause,
When heroes girt for Freedom's combat pause
Before high Heaven, and humble in their might
Call down its blessing on that coming fight.

At dawn, in arms went forth the patriot band;
And as the breeze, fresh from the TIBER, fanned
Their gilded gonfalons, all eyes could see
The palm-tree there, the sword, the keys of Heaven--
Types of the justice, peace and liberty,
That were to bless them when their chains were riven.
On to the Capitol the pageant moved,
While many a Shade of other times, that still
Around that grave of grandeur sighing roved,
Hung o'er their footsteps up the Sacred Hill
And heard its mournful echoes as the last
High-minded heirs of the Republic past.
'Twas then that thou, their Tribune,[1] (name which brought
Dreams of lost glory to each patriot's thought,)
Didst, with a spirit Rome in vain shall seek
To wake up in her sons again, thus speak:--
"ROMANS, look round you--on this sacred place
"There once stood shrines and gods and godlike men.
"What see you now? what solitary trace
"Is left of all that made ROME'S glory then?
"The shrines are sunk, the Sacred Mount bereft
"Even of its name--and nothing now remains
"But the deep memory of that glory, left
"To whet our pangs and aggravate our chains!
"But _shall_ this be?--our sun and sky the same,--
"Treading the very soil our fathers trod,--
"What withering curse hath fallen on soul and frame,
"What visitation hath there come from God
"To blast our strength and rot us into slaves,
"_Here_ on our great forefathers' glorious graves?
"It cannot be--rise up, ye Mighty Dead,--
"If we, the living, are too weak to crush
"These tyrant priests that o'er your empire tread,
"Till all but Romans at Rome's tameness blush!

"Happy, PALMYRA, in thy desert domes
"Where only date-trees sigh and serpents hiss;
"And thou whose pillars are but silent homes
"For the stork's brood, superb PERSEPOLIS!
"Thrice happy both, that your extinguisht race
"Have left no embers--no half-living trace--
"No slaves to crawl around the once proud spot,
"Till past renown in present shame's forgot.
"While ROME, the Queen of all, whose very wrecks,
"If lone and lifeless thro' a desert hurled,
"Would wear more true magnificence than decks
"The assembled thrones of all the existing world--
"ROME, ROME alone, is haunted, stained and curst,
"Thro' every spot her princely TIBER laves,
"By living human things--the deadliest, worst,
"This earth engenders--tyrants and their slaves!
"And we--oh shame!--we who have pondered o'er
"The patriot's lesson and the poet's lay;[2]
"Have mounted up the streams of ancient lore,
"Tracking our country's glories all the way--
"Even _we_ have tamely, basely kist the ground
"Before that Papal Power,--that Ghost of Her,
"The World's Imperial Mistress--sitting crowned
"And ghastly on her mouldering sepulchre![3]
"But this is past:--too long have lordly priests
"And priestly lords led us, with all our pride
"Withering about us--like devoted beasts,
"Dragged to the shrine, with faded garlands tied.
"'Tis o'er--the dawn of our deliverance breaks!
"Up from his sleep of centuries awakes
"The Genius of the Old Republic, free
"As first he stood, in chainless majesty,
"And sends his voice thro' ages yet to come,
"Proclaiming ROME, ROME, ROME, Eternal ROME!"

[1] Rienzi.

[2] The fine Canzone of Petrarch, beginning _"Spirto gentil,"_ is
supposed, by Voltaire and others, to have been addressed to Rienzi; but
there is much more evidence of its having been written, as Ginguene
asserts, to the young Stephen Colonna, on his being created a Senator of
Rome.

[3] This image is borrowed from Hobbes, whose words are, as near as I can
recollect:--"For what is the Papacy, but the Ghost of the old Roman
Empire, sitting crowned on the grave thereof?"

EXTRACT XIV.

Rome.

_Fragment of a Dream.--The great Painters supposed to be Magicians.--The
Beginnings of the Art.--Gildings on the Glories and Draperies.--
Improvements under Giotto, etc.--The first Dawn of the true Style in
Masaccio.--Studied by all the great Artists who followed him.--Leonardo da
Vinci, with whom commenced the Golden Age of Painting.--His Knowledge of
Mathematics and of Music.--His female heads all like each other.--
Triangular Faces.--Portraits of Mona Lisa, etc.--Picture of Vanity and
Modesty.--His_ chef-d'oeuvre, _the Last Supper.--Faded and almost
effaced_.

Filled with the wonders I had seen
In Rome's stupendous shrines and halls,
I felt the veil of sleep serene
Come o'er the memory of each scene,
As twilight o'er the landscape falls.
Nor was it slumber, sound and deep,
But such as suits a poet's rest--
That sort of thin, transparent sleep,
Thro' which his day-dreams shine the best.
Methought upon a plain I stood,
Where certain wondrous men, 'twas said,
With strange, miraculous power endued,
Were coming each in turn to shed
His art's illusions o'er the sight
And call up miracles of light.
The sky above this lonely place,
Was of that cold, uncertain hue,
The canvas wears ere, warmed apace,
Its bright creation dawns to view.

But soon a glimmer from the east
Proclaimed the first enchantments nigh;[1]
And as the feeble light increased,
Strange figures moved across the sky,
With golden glories deckt and streaks
Of gold among their garments' dyes;[2]
And life's resemblance tinged their cheeks,
But naught of life was in their eyes;--
Like the fresh-painted Dead one meets,
Borne slow along Rome's mournful streets.

But soon these figures past away;
And forms succeeded to their place
With less of gold in their array,
But shining with more natural grace,
And all could see the charming wands
Had past into more gifted hands.
Among these visions there was one,[3]
Surpassing fair, on which the sun,
That instant risen, a beam let fall,
Which thro' the dusky twilight trembled.
And reached at length the spot where all
Those great magicians stood assembled.
And as they turned their heads to view
The shining lustre, I could trace
The bright varieties it threw
On each uplifted studying face:[4]
While many a voice with loud acclaim
Called forth, "Masaccio" as the name
Of him, the Enchanter, who had raised
This miracle on which all gazed.

'Twas daylight now--the sun had risen
From out the dungeon of old Night.--
Like the Apostle from his prison
Led by the Angel's hand of light;
And--as the fetters, when that ray
Of glory reached them, dropt away.[5]
So fled the clouds at touch of day!
Just then a bearded sage came forth,[6]
Who oft in thoughtful dream would stand,
To trace upon the dusky earth
Strange learned figures with his wand;
And oft he took the silver lute
His little page behind him bore,
And waked such music as, when mute,
Left in the soul a thirst for more!

Meanwhile his potent spells went on,
And forms and faces that from out
A depth of shadow mildly shone
Were in the soft air seen about.
Tho' thick as midnight stars they beamed,
Yet all like living sisters seemed,
So close in every point resembling
Each other's beauties--from the eyes
Lucid as if thro' crystal trembling,
Yet soft as if suffused with sighs,
To the long, fawn-like mouth, and chin,
Lovelily tapering, less and less,
Till by this very charm's excess,
Like virtue on the verge of sin,
It touched the bounds of ugliness.
Here lookt as when they lived the shades
Of some of Arno's dark-eyed maids--
Such maids as should alone live on
In dreams thus when their charms are gone:
Some Mona Lisa on whose eyes
A painter for whole years might gaze,[7]
Nor find in all his pallet's dyes
One that could even approach their blaze!
Here float two spirit shapes,[8] the one,
With her white fingers to the sun
Outspread as if to ask his ray
Whether it e'er had chanced to play
On lilies half so fair as they!
This self-pleased nymph was Vanity--
And by her side another smiled,
In form as beautiful as she,
But with that air subdued and mild,
That still reserve of purity,
Which is to beauty like the haze
Of evening to some sunny view,
Softening such charms as it displays
And veiling others in that hue,
Which fancy only can see thro'!
This phantom nymph, who could she be,
But the bright Spirit, Modesty?

Long did the learned enchanter stay
To weave his spells and still there past,
As in the lantern's shifting play
Group after group in close array,
Each fairer, grander, than the last.
But the great triumph of his power
Was yet to come:--gradual and slow,
(As all that is ordained to tower
Among the works of man must grow,)
The sacred vision stole to view,
In that half light, half shadow shown,
Which gives to even the gayest hue
A sobered, melancholy tone.
It was a vision of that last,[9]
Sorrowful night which Jesus past
With his disciples when he said
Mournfully to them--"I shall be
"Betrayed by one who here hath fed
"This night at the same board with me."
And tho' the Saviour in the dream
Spoke not these words, we saw them beam
Legibly in his eyes (so well
The great magician workt his spell),
And read in every thoughtful line
Imprinted on that brow divine.

The meek, the tender nature, grieved,
Not angered to be thus deceived--
Celestial love requited ill
For all its care, yet loving still--
Deep, deep regret that there should fall
From man's deceit so foul a blight
Upon that parting hour--and all
_His_ Spirit must have felt that night.
Who, soon to die for human-kind,
Thought only, mid his mortal pain,
How many a soul was left behind
For whom he died that death in vain!

Such was the heavenly scene--alas!
That scene so bright so soon should pass
But pictured on the humid air,
Its tints, ere long, grew languid there;[10]
And storms came on, that, cold and rough,
Scattered its gentlest glories all--
As when the baffling winds blow off
The hues that hang o'er Terni's fall,--
Till one by one the vision's beams
Faded away and soon it fled.
To join those other vanisht dreams
That now flit palely 'mong the dead,--
The shadows of those shades that go.
Around Oblivion's lake below!

[1] The paintings of those artists who were introduced into Venice and
Florence from Greece.

[2] Margaritone of Orezzo, who was a pupil and imitator of the Greeks, is
said to have invented this art of gilding the ornaments of pictures, a
practice which, though it gave way to a purer taste at the beginning of
the 16th century, was still occasionally used by many of the great
masters: as by Raphael in the ornaments of the Fornarina, and by Rubens
not unfrequently in glories and flames.

[3] The works of Masaccio.--For the character of this powerful and
original genius, see Sir Joshua Reynolds's twelfth discourse. His
celebrated frescoes are in the church of St. Pietro del Carmine, at
Florence.

[4] All the great artists studies, and many of them borrowed from
Masaccio. Several figures in the Cartoons of Raphael are taken, with but
little alteration, from his frescoes.

[5] "And a light shined in the prison ... and his chains fell off from his
hands."--_Acts_.

[6] Leonardo da Vinci.

[7] He is said to have been four years employed upon the portrait of this
fair Florentine, without being able, after all, to come up to his idea of
her beauty.

[8] Vanity and Modesty in the collection of Cardinal Fesch, at Rome. The
composition of the four hands here is rather awkward, but the picture,
altogether, is very delightful. There is a repetition of the subject in
the possession of Lucien Bonaparte.

[9] The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, which is in the Refectory of the
Convent delle Grazie at Milan.

[10] Leonardo appears to have used a mixture of oil and varnish for this
picture, which alone, without the various other causes of its ruin, would
have prevented any long duration of its beauties. It is now almost
entirely effaced.

EXTRACT XV.

Rome.

_Mary Magdalen.--Her Story.--Numerous Pictures of her.--Correggio--Guido
--Raphael, etc.--Canova's two exquisite Statues.--The Somariva Magdalen.
--Chantrey's Admiration of Canova's Works_.

No wonder, MARY, that thy story
Touches all hearts--for there we see thee.
The soul's corruption and its glory,
Its death and life combine in thee.

From the first moment when we find
Thy spirit haunted by a swarm
Of dark desires,--like demons shrined
Unholily in that fair form,--
Till when by touch of Heaven set free,
Thou camest, with those bright locks of gold
(So oft the gaze of BETHANY),
And covering in their precious fold
Thy Saviour's feet didst shed such tears
As paid, each drop, the sins of years!--
Thence on thro' all thy course of love
To Him, thy Heavenly Master,--Him
Whose bitter death-cup from above
Had yet this cordial round the brim,
That woman's faith and love stood fast
And fearless by Him to the last:--
Till, oh! blest boon for truth like thine!
Thou wert of all the chosen one,
Before whose eyes that Face Divine
When risen from the dead first shone;
That thou might'st see how, like a cloud,
Had past away its mortal shroud,
And make that bright revealment known
To hearts less trusting than thy own.
All is affecting, cheering, grand;
The kindliest record ever given,
Even under God's own kindly hand,
Of what repentance wins from Heaven!

No wonder, MARY, that thy face,
In all its touching light of tears,
Should meet us in each holy place,
Where Man before his God appears,
Hopeless--were he not taught to see
All hope in Him who pardoned thee!
No wonder that the painter's skill
Should oft have triumpht in the power
Of keeping thee all lovely still
Even in thy sorrow's bitterest hour;
That soft CORREGGIO should diffuse
His melting shadows round thy form;
That GUIDO'S pale, unearthly hues
Should in portraying thee grow warm;
That all--from the ideal, grand,
Inimitable Roman hand,
Down to the small, enameling touch
Of smooth CARLINO--should delight
In picturing her, "who loved so much,"
And was, in spite of sin, so bright!