I. <br />WHAT part is left thee, lion? Ravenous beast, <br />Which hadst the world for pasture, and for scope <br />And compass of thine homicidal hope <br />The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast <br />Of souls subdued from west to sunless east, <br />From blackening north to bloodred south aslope, <br />All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope, <br />And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest; <br />Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod, <br />Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God, <br />And by thy creed’s gift heaven wherein to dwell; <br />Heaven laughs with all his light and might above <br />That earth has cast thee out of faith and love; <br />Thy part is but the hollow dream of hell. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />II. <br /> <br />The light of life has faded from thy cause, <br />High priest of heaven and hell and purgatory: <br />Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story, <br />But the red prey was rent out of thy paws <br />Long since and they that dying brake down thy laws <br />Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory <br />Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary <br />High altars, waning with the world’s applause. <br />This Italy was Dante’s Bruno died <br />Here Campanella, too sublime for pride, <br />Endured thy God’s worst here, and hence went home. <br />And what art thou, that time’s full tide should shrink <br />For thy sake downward? What art thou, to think <br />Thy God shall give thee back for birthright Rome?<br /><br />Algernon Charles Swinburne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/quia-nominor-leo-sonnets/
