Ancestral guardians of my home forgive, Pan, too, and Sylvan, if I do not live The life I praise; but ere I knew its charms, The choir of Muses wooed me to their arms, Taught me an eager child their sacred lore, Arts I still love; and fain had taught me more— To map Heav’n’s paths, number its stars, and trace Why wanes the moon; when veils the sun his face, Hastes purple-clad to sink on Ocean’s breast, And stays Night’s course for him and Man to rest; Where growling earthquakes breed; and why seas feign To roar in wrath, and straightway laugh again.— Something I learned; and blest had been my state, If gifted with the will and powers by Fate To follow Nature to her primal cause, And coax from her the meaning of her laws; Like him, too early lost, who told us how To spurn at all it is not Man’s to know, To count it shame to dread Death, as to weep At putting off our shoes to go to sleep. But my blood chills—poor thing, it cannot find Air it may breathe—where soars aloft sheer Mind. Yet why lament that the Seer’s part is not For me, when mine the sweet, if humbler, lot— To light and feed a poet’s holy fire; Rapt from myself to feel a God inspire The visions that I see, the words I pen— The message that I bring my fellow men— Bound, if the Muse decrees, to soar away Where rolls Spercheios, or girls dance and play On Spartan hills, or to some forest dell Of snowy Hæmus; while, I know it well, That far so ever as I seem to roam, My spirit always will return to home, Predestined to no inglorious themes— My native fields, and woods, and sparkling streams, And the race no less that those vales frequent, Simple husbandmen, wholly innocent Of ill, though shrewd, keen to resent a wrong; For whom I meditate my pastoral song. Fancy will wander oft to lands unknown, But finds the thoughts to dwell on in its own. Italian peasant I, and would rehearse Our peasants’ virtues in Italian verse.