Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/104

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Then, mother of great empires, Rome,

City of the majestic past,

That o'er far leagues of alien foam

The shadows of her eagles cast,

Imperious still; impending, vast,

The Colosseum's curving line;

Pillar and arch and colonnade;

St. Peter's consecrated shade,

And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays;

The ruins on the Palatine

With all their memories of dead days.

And Naples, with her sapphire arc

Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore;

Above her, like a demon stark,

The dark fire-mountain evermore

Looming portentous, as of yore;

Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves;

Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines

And olives, and the shattered shrines

Of Pæstum where the grey ghosts tread,

And where the wilding rose still waves

As when by Greek girls garlanded.

But hark! What sound the ear dismays,

Mine Italy, mine Italy?

Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze

Of loveliness spread over thee!

Yet since the grapple needs must be,

I who have wandered in the night

With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known,

Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown,

Met Angelo and Raphael,

Against iconoclastic might

In this grim hour must wish thee well! Clinton Scollard