236 „ BYRON'S

Rome for the‘sake of ages, Glory shedsHer light through thy sole aperture; to thoseWho worship, here are altars for their beads;Ami they who feel for genius may reposeTheir eyes on honour’d forms, whose busts aroundthem close.

CXLVIIJ.

There is a dungeon in whose dim drear lightWhat do I gaze on? Nothing: look again !

Two forms are slowly shadow’d on my sight—Two insulated phantoms of the brain:

It is not so; I see them full and plain—

An old man and a female young and fair,

Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose veinThe blood is nectar: hut what doth she there,With her unmantled neck, and bosom whito andbare?

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of younglife,

Where on the heart and from the heart we tookOur first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,Blest into mother, in the innocent look,

Or even the piping cry of lips that brookNo pain and small suspense, a joy perceivesMan kuows not, when from out its cradled nookShe secs her little bud put forth its leaves—What may the fruit bo yet ? I know not—Cain wasEve’s.

CL.

But here youth offers to old age the food,

The milk of his own gift: it is her sireTo whom she renders back the debt of bloodBorn with her birth. No! he shall not expireWhile in those wo rm and lovely veius the lireOf health and holy feeling can provideGroat Nature's Nile , whose deep stream riseshigher

Than Egypt ’s river:—from that gentle sideDrink , drink and live, old man! Heayen’s realmholds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the milky wayHas not thy story’s purity; it isA constellation of a sweeter ray,

And sacred Nature triumphs more in thisReverse of her decree, than in the abyssWhere sparklo distant worlds:—Oh, holiestnurse!

No drop of that clear stream its way shall missTo thy sire’s heart, replenishing its sourceWith life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.

CLI i.

Turn to the mole which Hadrian rear'd onhigh,*

Imperial mimic of old Egypt ’s piles,—

Colossal copyist of deformityWhoso travell’d phantasy from the far Nile 'sEnormous model, doom’d the artist's toilsTo build for giants, and for his vain earth,

His shrunken ashes, raise th’s dome; how smilesThe gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,

To view the huge design which sprung from such abirth t

WORKS.

CLIII.

But lo! the dome—the vast and wondrous dom®*To which Diana’s marvel was a cell—

Christ’s shrine above his martyr's tomb!

I have beheld the Ephesian’s miracle—

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwellThe hytena and the jackal in their shade;

1 have beheld Sophia’e bright roofs swellTheir glittering mass i’ the sun, and have sur-vey’d

Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslo®pray'd;

CL1V.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,

Standest alone—with nothing like to thee—Worthiest of God , the holy and the true.

Since Zion’s desolation, when that HeForsook bis former city, what could be,

Of earthly structures, in his honour piled.

Of a sublimer aspect ? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty all & rflaisled

In this eternal ark of worship undeflled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;

And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind,Expanded by the genius of the spot,

Has grown colossal, and can only llndA fit abode wherein appear enshrinedThy hopes of immortality; and thouShalt one day, if found worthy, so defined.

See tby God face to face as thou dost nowHis Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

CLYL

Thou movest; but increasing with the advance*Like climbing some great Alp which still dot"rise,

Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows—but grows to harmonise"*A11 musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles—richer painting—shrines wbe r0flame . ,

The lampB of gold—and haughty dome whie°vies

In air with Earth 's chief structures, though thenframe .

Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clo utl9must claim.

CL VII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou n lUstbreak,

To separate contemplation, the great whole;And as the ocean many bays will mal:«eThat ask the eye —bo hero condense thy soulTo more immediate objects, and controlThy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heartIts eloquent proportions, and unrollIn mighty graduations, part by part.

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

CLVIIL

Not by its fault—but thine: Our outward senseIs but of gradual grasp—imd as it isThat what we have of feeling most intenseOutstrips our faint expression; even SP this

♦ The Castle of St, Ap£p1q.