By the skirts of that gray Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest-shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest-home : Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.
Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, "I win, I win!" And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were e'er,
Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time.
In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth; Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born- The spark beneath his feet is dead, He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear: so thou, O tyranny! beholdest now Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest : Grovel on the earth; ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride!
Noon descends around me now: "Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star
Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curved horizon's bound, To the point of heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky; And the plains that silent lie Underneath. The leaves unsodden
Where the infant frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines 11
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one; And my spirit, which so long Darkened this swift stream of song, Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky; Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all
Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being,) Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be In the sea of life and agony— Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell 'mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine
Of all the flowers that breathe and shine.
We may live so happy there,
That the spirits of the air,
Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
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