LA FESTA
DELLO STATUTO.
The sunset heavens are all aglow,
Trumpets are blown and roses blow,
And gales of fragrance and melody flow
Round aloes and palms of the Pincian,
Where a brilliant Corso seems to grow
In endless procession, rolling slow
Through the populous garden, to and fro,
Over against the Vatican,
Whose vast white silence thunders No,
And smites, a self-imprisoned woe,
In the face of the Romans’ holiday show.
Beyond, on the ridge Janiculan,
Umbrella pines in funereal row
Frown darkly, and infinite shadows throw
On the level light. Like a halo of snow,
In tinge the mid-ribbon of a rainbow,
Above yon dome metropolitan
A cloud-ring floats; in the nave below
A worshiper, licking the floor, doth go
On his knees to kiss bronze Peter’s toe—
Religion groveling in dust, as though
An Ariel sunk to a Caliban!
Ere evening glides into the gloam,
Through the Villa Medici’s sombre bloom
To the crest of the Mountain of Gardens clomb,
Lo! the whole circuit Aurelian!
How martyrs’ dust from the catacomb
Blossoms in many a swelling dome,
More richly gilt by the sunset’s chrome—
High altar, perchance, an Apostle’s tomb,
The outside steps a beggar’s home—
Far as the desolate Cœlian,
And the statues tossed in air like foam
From the roof of the lordly Lateran!
The gods are dethroned in the Pantheon;
But ruinous walls, like the crumbling loom
Of a once world-shaking thunder-boom,
Crop, here and there, out of Cæsar’s Rome,
And the grandeur that was Republican.
From Flaminian gate to the Aventine,
From the Borgo to the Quirinal,
In Campus Martius, on Esquiline,
And the Trastevere—bell and shrine—
Towers the Rome Pontifical;
With the Bambino, a doll benign,
Miraculous cure in its jewel shine,
On the seat of Jove Capitoline.
But Rome still rules Imperial
In the region of the Palatine.
But a boulevard lords it, lofty and fine
In insolence of youth, on the Viminal.
Musing, I watch the sun decline,
Revealing a golden thread of brine
Beyond the Campagna’s sea-like line,
Till in that Hesperian burial
The day with its thoughts has gone to join
The ages dead and the ghosts divine
Of the men of the Forum and Capitol.
But, land of brotherly palm and pine!
Land of the olive and the vine!
Land of Latin and Sabine!
A future of glowing hope is thine;
For a Star in the East ethereal,
The Star of Liberty, thine and mine,
Pours light in a joyous flood, like wine,
To the weary watchers for a sign—
New-risen o’er snowy Apennine
On the Rome of Victor Emanuel.
‘Tis night, but the city is noisy and gay
With crowds on crowds that mingle and flow—
An under-sweep of majestic sway
From the past, heard near and far away,
The voices of yore and of yesterday—
To the Tiber; and, lo! the girondola,
In fiery fantasies of display,
On the Castle of Saint Angelo!
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 55 (June 1877):
64-65.
Reprinted in Poems of Many Years and Many Places (1881), pp. 37-40.
