Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
To the Tiber
By Alessandro Guidi (16501712)T
My boyhood’s vision of thy classic stream,
Had taught my mind to think
That over sands of gold
Thy limpid waters rolled,
And ever-verdant laurels grew upon thy brink.
The rude reality hath met mine eyes:
Here, seated on thy bank,
All desolate and drear
Thy margin doth appear,
With creeping weeds, and shrubs, and vegetation rank.
The wave pellucid, and the Naiad’s shrine,
In crystal grot below;
But thy tempestuous course
Runs turbulent and hoarse,
And, swelling with wild wrath, thy wintry waters flow.
Peril awaits the light, confiding bark,
In eddying vortex swamped;
Foul, treacherous, and deep,
Thy winding waters sweep,
Enveloping their prey in dismal ruin prompt.
The mountain pine-tree’s broken trunk,
Aimed at the galley’s keel;
And well thy wave can waft
Upon that broken shaft
The barge, whose shattered wreck thy bosom will conceal.
The summer heat, the noontide’s fervid hour,
That fires the mantling blood,
Yon cautious swain can’t urge
To tempt thy dangerous surge,
Or cool his limbs within thy dark, insidious flood.
When struggle fierce thy disemboguing tide
With Ocean’s monarch held;
But quickly overcome
By Neptune’s masterdom,
Back thou hast fled as oft, ingloriously repelled.
A giant’s strength thy flood redundant wields,
Bursting above its brims,—
Strength that no dike can check;
Dire is the harvest-wreck!
Buoyant, with lofty horns, the affrighted bullock swims.
Tiber, and what brings honor to thee most
Is, that thy waters roll
Fast by the eternal home
Of Glory’s daughter, Rome;
And that thy billows bathe the sacred Capitol.
Clœlia, thy current’s virgin conqueror;
And him who stemmed the march
Of Tuscany’s proud host,
When, firm at honor’s post,
He waved his blood-stained blade above the broken arch.
To torrid Africans, to frozen Huns,
Have taught thy name, O flood!
And to that utmost verge
Where radiantly emerge
Apollo’s car of flame and golden-footed stud.
Ever destructive of some monument,
Thou makest foul return;
Insulting with thy wave
Each Roman hero’s grave,
And Scipio’s dust that fills yon consecrated urn!