Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of <br />Virgil's Death <br /> <br /> <br />Roman Virgil, thou that singest <br />Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, <br />Ilion falling, Rome arising, <br />wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; <br /> <br />Landscape-lover, lord of language <br />more than he that sang the Works and Days, <br />All the chosen coin of fancy <br />flashing out from many a golden phrase; <br /> <br />Thou that singest wheat and woodland, <br />tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; <br />All the charm of all the Muses <br />often flowering in a lonely word; <br /> <br />Poet of the happy Tityrus <br />piping underneath his beechen bowers; <br />Poet of the poet-satyr <br />whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; <br /> <br />Chanter of the Pollio, glorying <br />in the blissful years again to be, <br />Summers of the snakeless meadow, <br />unlaborious earth and oarless sea; <br /> <br />Thou that seest Universal <br />Nature moved by Universal Mind; <br />Thou majestic in thy sadness <br />at the doubtful doom of human kind; <br /> <br />Light among the vanished ages; <br />star that gildest yet this phantom shore; <br />Golden branch amid the shadows, <br />kings and realms that pass to rise no more; <br /> <br />Now thy Forum roars no longer, <br />fallen every purple Caesar's dome - <br />Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm <br />sound for ever of Imperial Rome - <br /> <br />Now the Rome of slaves hath perished, <br />and the Rome of freemen holds her place, <br />I, from out the Northern Island <br />sundered once from all the human race, <br /> <br />I salute thee, Mantovano, <br />I that loved thee since my day began, <br />Wielder of the stateliest measure <br />ever moulded by the lips of man.<br /><br />Alfred Lord Tennyson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-virgil-2/
