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 Æneas 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 Were but a surface ready to unclose. Naples! how doth thy country likeness bear To human passions; fertile; sulphurous: Its dangers and its pleasures both seem born Of those inflamed volcanoes, which bestow Upon the atmosphere so many charms, Yet bid the thunder growl beneath our feet. Pliny but studied nature that the more He might love Italy; and call'd his land The loveliest, when all other titles fail'd. He sought for science as a warrior seeks For conquest: it was from this very cape He went to watch Vesuvius through the flames: Those flames consumed him. O Memory! noble power! thy reign is here. Strange destiny, how thus, from age to age, Doth man complain of that which he has lost. Still do departed years, each in their turn, Seem treasures of happiness gone by; And while mind, joyful in its far advance, Plunges amid the future, still the Soul Seems to regret some other ancient home To which it is drawn closer by the past. We envy Roman grandeur--did they not Envy their fathers' brave simplicity? Once this voluptuous country they despised; Its pleasures but subdued their enemies. See, in the distance, Capua! she o'ercame The warrior, whose firm soul resisted Rome More time than did a world.