From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! And control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
Over the steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of day
A world is at our feet as fragile as our day.
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Fantastically tangled: the green hills
Are clothed with early blossoms, through the green grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes,
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes,
Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.
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A ruin - - yet what a ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet off the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And moved where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or been cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is reared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all --years --man - have reft away.
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