Page:Corinne - L. E. L.pdf/9



Ay, Nature, History and Poesie, Rival each other's greatness:—here the eye Sweeps with a glance, all wonders and all time. A dead volcano now, I see thy lake Avernus, with the fear-inspiring waves Acheron, and Phlégeton boiling up With subterranean flame: these are the streams Of that old hell Aeneas visited.

Fire, the devouring life which first creates The world which it consumes, struck terror most When least its laws were known.—Ah! Nature then Reveal'd her secrets but to Poetry.

The town of Cuma and the Sibyl's cave, The temple of Apollo mark'd this height; Here is the wood where grew the bough of gold. The country of the Æneid is around; The fables genius consecrated here Are memories whose traces still we seek.

A Triton has beneath these billows plunged The daring Trojan, who in song defied The sea divinities: still are the rocks Hollow and sounding, such as Virgil told. Imagination's truth is from its power: Man's genius can create when nature's felt; He copies when he deems that he invents.

Amid these masses, terrible and old, Creation's witnesses, you see arise A younger hill of the volcano born: For here the earth is stormy as the sea, But doth not, like the sea, peaceful return Within its bounds: the heavy element, Upshaken by the tremulous abyss, Digs valleys, and rears mountains; while the waves, Harden'd to stone, attest the storms which rend Her depths; strike now upon the earth, You hear the subterranean vault resound. It is as if the ground on which we dwell