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| Thomas Manby Ruins of the Colosseum, Rome ca. 1660-90 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| Thomas Manby Ruins of the Colosseum, Rome ca. 1660-90 drawing British Museum |
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| Thomas Manby Ruins of the Colosseum, Rome ca. 1660-90 drawing British Museum |
from Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
– Algernon Charles Swinburne
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
* * *
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with reason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
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| Giovanni Battista Piranesi Ruin of Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli from Vedute di Roma ca. 1748-78 etching- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Piranesi Remains of the pronaos of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, Rome from Le Antichità Romane 1756 etching British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Piranesi Ruins of the Houses of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill, Rome from Le Antichità Romane 1756 etching British Museum |
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
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| Francis Towne Roman Forum 1781 watercolor British Museum |
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| Francis Towne Claudian Aqueduct near Arch of Constantine, Rome 1781 watercolor British Museum |
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| Francis Towne Baths of Titus, Rome 1781 watercolor British Museum |
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.
Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around:
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silvering splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
(1866)
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| Francis Towne Temple of Saturn, Rome 1780-81 watercolor British Museum |
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| Francis Towne Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome 1781 watercolor British Museum |
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| Francis Towne Ruins and Buildings on the Palatine Hill, Rome 1781 watercolor British Museum |
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| Giacomo Brogi Palaces of Caligula and Tiberius, Palatine Hill, Rome ca. 1856-81 albumen silver print National Gallery of Canada |
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| Robert Macpherson Theatre of Marcellus, from Piazza Montanara, Rome ca, 1858-63 albumen silver print National Gallery of Canada |