The Shadow of the Obelisk

Home returning from the music which had so entranced my brain,
That the way I scarce remember'd to the Pincian
Hill again,
Nay, was willing to forget it underneath a moon so fair,
In a solitude so sacred, and so summer-like in air —
Came I to the side of Tiber, hardly conscious where I stood,
Till I marked the sullen murmur of the venerable flood.
Rome lay doubly dead around me, sunk in silence calm and deep;
'T was the death of desolation — and the nightly one of sleep.
Dreams alone, and recollections peopled now the solemn hour;
Such a spot and such a season well might wake the Fancy's power;
Yet no monumental fragment, storied arch or temple vast,
Mid the mean, plebeian buildings loudly whisper'd of the Past.
Tether'd by the shore, some barges hid the wave's august repose;
Petty sheds of humble merchants, nigh the Campus Martius rose;
Hardly could the dingy Thamis, when his tide is ebbing low,
Life's dull scene in colder colours to the homesick exile show.
Winding from the vulgar prospect, through a labyrinth of lanes,
Forth I stepp'd upon the Corso, where its greatness Rome retains.
Yet it was not ancient glory, though the midnight radiance fell
Soft on many a princely mansion, many a dome's majestic swell;
Though, from some hush'd corner gushing, oft a modern fountain gleam'd,
Where the marble and the waters in their freshness equal seem'd:
What though open courts unfolded columns of
Corinthian mould?
Beautiful it was — but alter'd! naught bespake the
Rome of old.
So, regardless of the grandeur, pass'd I tow'rds the
Northern Gate;
All around were shining gardens — churches glittering, yet sedate, —
Heavenly bright the broad enclosure! but the o'erwhelming silence brought
Stillness to mine own heart's beating, with a moment's truce of thought,
And I started as I found me walking ere I was aware,
O'er the Obelisk's tall shadow, on the pavement of the Square.
Ghost-like seem'd it to address me, and convey'd
me for a while,
Backward, through a thousand ages, to the borders of the Nile; gg
Where for centuries every morning saw it creeping, long and dun,
O'er the stones perchance of Memphis, or the City of the Sun.
Kingly turrets look'd upon it — pyramids and sculptured fanes:
Towers and palaces have moulder'd — but the shadow still remains.
Tired of that lone tomb of Egypt, o'er the seas the trophy flew;
Here the eternal apparition met the millions' daily view.
Virgil's foot has touch'd it often — it has kiss'd
Octavia's face —
Royal chariots have rolled o'er it, in the frenzy of the race,
When the strong, the swift, the valiant, mid the throng'd arena strove,
In the days of good Augustus, and the dynasty of Jove.
Herds are feeding in the Forum, as in old Evander's time:
Tumbled from the steep Tarpeian all the towers that sprang sublime.
Strange! that what seem'd most inconstant should
the most abiding prove;
Strange! that what is hourly moving no mutation can remove:
Ruin'd lies the cirque! the chariots, long ago,
have ceased to roll —
Even the Obelisk is broken — but the shadow still is whole.
What is Fame! if mightiest empires leave so little mark behind,
How much less must heroes hope for, in the wreck of human kind!
Less than even this darksome picture, which I
tread beneath my feet,
Copied by a lifeless moonbeam on the pebbles of the street;
Since if Caesar's best ambition, living, was to be renown'd,
What shall Caesar leave behind him, save the
shadow of a sound?