Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
The Old Man of Verona
By Claudian (c. 370–c. 404)B
Has past an age of quiet. The same roof
That screened his cradle yields a shelter now
To his gray hairs. He leans upon a staff
Where as a child he crept along the ground,
And in one cottage he has numbered o’er
A length of years. Him fortune has not drawn
Into her whirl of strange vicissitudes;
Nor has he drunk, with ever-changing home,
From unknown rivers. Never on the deep,
A merchant, has he trembled at the storm;
Nor, as a soldier, started at the blare
Of trumpets; nor endured the noisy strife
Of the hoarse-clamoring bar: of the great world
Simply unconscious. To the neighboring town
A stranger, he enjoys the free expanse
Of open heaven. The old man marks his year,
Not by the names of consuls, but computes
Time by his various crops: by apples notes
The autumn; by the blooming flower the spring.
From the same field he sees his daily sun
Go down, and lift again its reddening orb;
And, by his own contracted universe,
The rustic measures the vast light of day.
He well remembers that broad massive oak
An acorn; and has seen the grove grow old,
Coeval with himself. Verona seems
To him more distant than the swarthy Ind:
He deems the lake Benacus like the shores
Of the red gulf. But his a vigor hale
And unabated: he has now outlived
Three ages; though a grandsire, green in years,
With firm and sinewy arms. The traveller
May roam to farthest Spain: he more has known
Of earthly space; the old man more of life.