Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Rome, Hills of

Monte Cavallo

By Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)

(From Amours de Voyage)

YE, too, marvellous twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo

Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,

Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,

Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,—

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas,

Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you,

Will the brief form have sufficed, that a pope has set up on the apex

Of the Egyptian stone that o’ertops you, the Christian symbol?

And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,

Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,

Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,

Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,

Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian pontiff,

Are ye also baptized? are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!

Am I to turn me for this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?