Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
The Tower of Famine
By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)A
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, so that pity
Weeps o’er the shipwrecks of oblivion’s wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
For bread and gold and blood; pain, linked to guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.
There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbéd roof,
The brazen-gated temples and the bowers
Of solitary wealth, the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air,
Are by its presence dimmed,—they stand aloof,
And are withdrawn,—so that the world is bare,
As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror,
Amid a company of ladies fair
Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.