To Virgil

Written at the Request of the Mantuans
for the Nineteenth Centenary
of Virgil's Death
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Roman Virgil, thou that singest
   Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
   wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;

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Landscape-lover, lord of language
   more than he that sang the "Works and Days,"
All the chosen coin of fancy
   flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland,

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   tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses
   often flowering in a lonely word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus
   piping underneath his beechen bowers;

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Poet of the poet-satyr
   whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying
   in the blissful years again to be,
Summers of the snakeless meadow,

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   unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

Thou that seëst Universal
   Nature moved by Universal Mind;
Thou majestic in thy sadness
   at the doubtful doom of human kind;

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Light among the vanish'd ages;
   star that gildest yet this phantom shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows,
   kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer,

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fallen every purple Cæsar's dome -
Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm
   sound forever of Imperial Rome -

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd,
   and the Rome of freemen holds her place,

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I, from out the Northern Island
   sunder'd once from all the human race,

I salute thee, Mantovano,
   I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure

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   ever moulded by the lips of man.