A solemn thing it is, and full of awe,
Wandering long time among the lonely hills,
To issue on a sudden 'mid the wrecks
Of some fall'n city, as might seem a coast
From which the tide of life has ebbed away,
Leaving bare sea-marks only. Such there lie
Among the Alban mountains--Tusculum,
Or Palestrina with Cyclopean walls
Enormous: and this solemn awe we felt
And knew this morning, when we stood among
What of that first-named City yet survives. For we had wandered long among those hills,
Watching the white goats on precipitous heights,
Half-hid among the bushes, or their young
Tending new-yeaned: and we had paused to hear
The deep-toned music of the convent bells,
And wound through many a verdant forest path,
Gathering the crocus and anemone,
With that fresh gladness, which when flowers are new
In the first spring, they bring us; till at last
We issued out upon an eminence,
Commanding prospect large on every side--
But largest where the world's great City lay,
Whose features, undistinguishable now,
Allowed no recognition, save where the eye
Could mark the white front of the Lateran
Facing this way, or rested on the dome,
The broad stupendous dome, high over all.
And as a sea around an island's roots
Spreads, so the level champaign every way
Stretched round the City, level all, and green
With the new vegetation of the spring;
Nor by the summer ardours scorched as yet,
Which shot from southern suns, too soon dry up
The beauty and the freshness of the plains;
While to the right the ridge of Apennine,
Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned,
Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem
Another range of more aë rial hills. These things were at a distance, but more near
And at our feet signs of the tide of life,
That once was here, and now had ebbed away--
Pavements entire, without one stone displaced,
Where yet there had not rolled a chariot wheel
For many hundred years; rich cornices,
Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship,
And broken shafts of columns, that along
This highway side lay prone; vaults that were rooms
And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone,
Seats and gradations of a theatre,
Which emptied of its population now,
Shall never be refilled: and all these things,
Memorials of the busy life of man,
Or of his ample means of pomp and pride,
Scattered among the solitary hills,
And lying open to the sun and showers,
And only visited at intervals
By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves
From distant lands; with now no signs of life,
Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest
'Mid the low bushes, or where timidly
The rapid lizard glanced between the stones--
All saying that the fashion of this world
Passes away: that not Philosophy
Nor Eloquence can guard their dearest haunts
From the rude touch of desecrating time.
What marvel, when the very fanes of God,
The visible temples of the Holy One,
Claim no exemption from the general doom,
But lie in ruinous heaps; when nothing stands,
Nor may endure to the end, except alone
The spiritual temple built with living stones?