Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Monte Pincio
By Sarah Bridges StebbinsA
Bound eternally;
With weary hands enchained,
And faces bowed and pained,
While eras dawned and waned,
We thus have watched the mightiness of Rome!
Whither could we flee
To reach some blessed land
Unheld by conquering band,
Ungrasped by outstretched hand
Of an insatiate and world-possessing Rome!
Mournful and alone
Amid the bright To-Day,
Signs of things past away,
We symbolize the sway
Of unrelenting and resistless olden Rome!
In those days of yore
Some subtly thinking Greek
Beholding strength grow weak,
Made deathless marble speak
Of Freedom’s yearning strife against enslaving Rome!
Farther reaching thought
Saw happy coming hour
When e’en earth’s conquering power
No more could darkly lower;
For death the prisoners freed even of law-girt Rome!
“Lo,” he said, “alway,
O captives, ye shall stand
Personifying band,
In emblematic land,
Of bondage wider than the thraldom of great Rome!
Common human state,
Whose chains of circumstance
Forbid the soul’s advance
Towards fetterless expanse
Of liberty beyond our stern condition’s Rome!
Throughout mortal life
Of longing to be free
From entailed misery
Of unsought destiny
Controlled and crushed by an inexorable Rome!
From man’s unseen soul
Shall evermore arise
The secret anguish cries
Of doubt that never dies,
Humanity’s protest against ordaining Rome!
‘If with end of breath
The bonds of time and place,
Of nature and of race,
Of heritage’s trace
Shall fall forever off from slaves of this earth’s Rome?’”
Our sad gaze below,
But few the seeing eyes
That in our captive guise
Know hidden meaning lies
Of Fate-environed life midst universal Rome!