Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces! <br />Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb? <br />All things are alive in your sacred walls <br />eternal Rome, only for me all’s still. <br />Who will whisper to me, at what window <br />will I see the sweet thing who will kindle me, and quicken? <br />Already I guess the ways, walking to her and from her, <br />ever and always I’ll go, while sweet time slips by. <br />I’m gazing at church and palace, ruin and column, <br />like a serious man making sensible use of a journey, <br />but soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple, <br />Love’s temple, receiving its new initiate. <br />Though you are a whole world, Rome, still, without Love, <br />the world’s not the world, Rome cannot be Rome.<br /><br />Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/roman-elegies-i/
