Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpt from John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), "Southward Bound," Many Moods: A Volume of Verse (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1878), pp. 3-7 (at 3-4):

Great cities, greater in decay and death,
    Dream-like with immemorial repose,
Whose ruins like a shrine for ever sheathe
    The mighty names and memories of those
    Who lived and died to die no more, shall close
Your happy pilgrimage; and you shall learn,
Breathing their ancient air, the thoughts that burn

For ever in the hearts of after men:—
    Yea, from the very soil of silent Rome
You shall grow wise; and, walking, live again
    The lives of buried peoples, and become
    A child by right of that eternal home,
Cradle and grave of empires, on whose walls
The sun himself subdued to reverence falls.

O solemn aisles! O vast and sacred shade!
    Ruins on ruins heaped! Imperial state
With rubbish of wrecked centuries o'erlaid!
    There Christ in Phoebus' shrine is consecrate;
    Titles of pope and priest surmount the gate
Where Cæsar's legions trampled: yet in vain
Age strives with age; for still the old gods reign:

Pale gods in cere-cloths, ghosts of bye-gone Greece,
    Rule in their marble sepulchres: the halls,
Through which we pass, with dead divinities
    Are gleaming; and the voice of Hellas calls
    Clear from her grave: nought but the pedestals
Belong to Christ: the carven shapes above
Still breathe and smile with life of ancient Love.

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