I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:[261] A little cupola, more neat than solemn, Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid[ej] To the Bard's tomb, and not the Warrior's column: The time must come, when both alike decayed, The Chieftain's trophy, and the Poet's volume, Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth. CV. With human blood that column was cemented, With human filth that column is defiled, As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented To show his loathing of the spot he soiled:[ek] Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose wild Instinct of gore and glory Earth has known Those sufferings Dante saw in Hell alone.[el] CVI. Yet there will still be bards: though Fame is smoke, Its fumes are frankincense to human thought; And the unquiet feelings, which first woke Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;[em] As on the beach the waves at last are broke, Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought Dash into poetry, which is but Passion, Or, at least, was so ere it grew a fashion. CVII. If in the course of such a life as was At once adventurous and contemplative, Men who partake all passions as they pass, Acquire the deep and bitter power to give[en] Their images again as in a glass, And in such colours that they seem to live; You may do right forbidding them to show 'em, But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.[262] CVIII. Oh! ye, who make the fortunes of all books! Benign Ceruleans of the second sex! Who advertise new poems by your looks, Your "Imprimatur" will ye not annex? What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,[eo] Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks? Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea![263] CIX. What! can I prove "a lion" then no more? A ball-room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling? To bear the compliments of many a bore, And sigh, "I can't get out," like Yorick's starling;[264] Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore (Because the world won't read him, always snarling), That Taste is gone, that Fame is but a lottery, Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie.[265] CX. Oh! "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"[266] As some one somewhere sings about the sky, And I, ye learnéd ladies, say of you; They say your stockings are so--(Heaven knows why, I have examined few pair of that hue); Blue as the garters which serenely lie Round the Patrician left-legs, which adorn The festal midnight, and the levee morn.[ep] CXI.