This our world has beauties everywhere;
Grand are your forests, Medes, and wondrous fair;
Travellers to Blest Araby have told
Of sands that grow frankincense, streams of gold;
Strange legends run of bulls with fire for breath,
Dragons sowing plains with myriad teeth,
Till in the place of harvest’s yellow ears
A battle field gleamed with steel helms and spears.
Leave me the land I live in, where kind earth
Yields real grain, a hundredfold at a birth;
And purple grapes of every laden vine
Laugh with the girls that tread them into wine.
Glad all life! In the olive, as each day
Ripens its juices; cattle, as they play
Amid rich herbage; the warrior steed,
Curvetting with arched neck about the mead.
Even the snow-white ram, and mighty bull,
Joy, as, Clitumnus, on them dashes full
Thy hallowed flood, to be chosen to escort
A Roman Triumph to Jove’s Temple-Court.
Ever; from young Spring, that, keeping the doors
Of Winter and of Summer, with soft show’rs
Melts March frosts, and returning with a gay,
Late Zephyr laughs the Dog-star’s heats away;
To Summer, that at call, whate’er the Hour,
Re-stocks the fold, and bids the orchard flow’r.
Fruitfulness everywhere—all things good;
No savage lions, tigers mad for blood,
No scaly pythons, gathered, coil on coil,
Into one orb, to hurl it on the spoil;
No wolf’s-bane, with its mystic-purple bloom
Tempting rash herb-collectors to their doom;
But Nature, kind in that which She denies,
Kind above all whenever She allies
With human effort.—
Mark how She has filled
The vales with rocks that cry: “Come, take, and build!”
How, to crown the work, She has bid beside
Each citadel’s sheer walls a river glide.
No Libyan desert ours, but a land
Of many streams, where in cool shadows stand
Knee-deep the still kine; and of lakes good store,
Como’s to Garda’s sea-imitating roar;
Of highways for her navies, east and west,
To circulate, world-through, Rome’s high behest;
Glorious service theirs, though the salt waves,
Sulking outside new ports in echoing caves,
Affect to murmur at decrees they know,
When Cæsar sets them bounds, they must allow.
Even for silver, brass and gold itself,
If Italy deigned boast of vulgar pelf,
She might just claims to be considered raise.
But she has titles, nobler far, to praise.
Hers the seed-bed, harvest, ever have been
Of men, of fighters, hardened, sharp, and keen,
Bred north and south, east and west, with, from Rome,
Chiefs to lead forth, and bring them victors home.
Band of mighty Shades! Ah! mightiest Thou
Who schoolest the insolent Hindoo now,
How weak is strength, valour no better than
Cowardice, when our Cæsar leads the van!
Hail to Giver of wane, and oil, and corn!
Hail, Shrine of ancient peace, ere Jove was born!
Hail, Mother of Men, real Men, source and spring
Of precious arts I love, of all I sing!
At thy call, my Italy, parent, nurse,
Unsealing primal well-heads, I rehearse
Pure rustic themes long since discoursed upon
Myrtle-clad slopes of musical Helicon!