TO VERONA.
Verona! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place,
Mated as well, conceal’d as willingly;
Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleamy canopy of gold,
Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles
Of Venus ever radiant o’er their couch.
Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here,
Nor pass into that theatre below
Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.
But ancient song arouses me: I hear
Cœlius and Aufuena; I behold
Lesbia, and Lesbia’s linnet at her lip
Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
For him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.
Even he must not detain me: one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, of swoop
Sublimer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Borneo sinks aside her.
Fare ye well,
Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb
One greater than you walls have ever seen,
Greater than Manto’s prophet eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome’s, hath hallowed;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is here.