English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
648. To Virgil
R
Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre;
All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word;
Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;
Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;
Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more;
Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome—
I, from out the Northern Islands sunder’d once from all the human race,
Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.