dots-menu
×

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Padua

Padua

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

(From Lines Written among the Euganean Hills)

PADUA, thou within whose walls

Those mute guests at festivals,

Son and Mother, Death and Sin,

Played at dice for Ezzelin,

Till Death cried, “I win, I win!”

And Sin cursed to lose the wager,

But Death promised, to assuage her,

That he would petition for

Her to be made Vice-Emperor,

When the destined years were o’er,

Over all between the Po

And the eastern Alpine snow,

Under the mighty Austrian.

Sin smiled so as Sin only can,

And since that time, ay, long before,

Both have ruled from shore to shore,

That incestuous pair, who follow

Tyrants as the sun the swallow,

As repentance follows crime,

And as changes follow time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,

Padua, now no more is burning;

Like a meteor, whose wild way

Is lost over the grave of day,

It gleams betrayed and to betray:

Once remotest nations came

To adore that sacred flame,

When it lit not many a hearth

On this cold and gloomy earth;

Now new fires from antique light

Spring beneath the wide world’s might,

But their spark lies dead in thee,

Trampled out by tyranny.

As the Norway woodman quells,

In the depth of piny dells,

One light flame among the brakes,

While the boundless forest shakes,

And its mighty trunks are torn

By the fire thus lowly born;

The spark beneath his feet is dead,

He starts to see the flames it fed

Howling through the darkened sky

With a myriad tongues victoriously,

And sinks down in fear; so thou,

O tyranny, beholdest now

Light around thee, and thou hearest

The loud flames ascend, and fearest:

Grovel on the earth; ay, hide

In the dust thy purple pride!