To Virgil / Lord Alfred Tennyson

Roman Virgil, thou that singest

Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,

Ilion falling, Rome arising,

wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language

more than he that sang the Works and Days,

All the chosen coin of fancy

flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland,

tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

All the charm of all the Muses

often flowering in a lonely word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus

piping underneath his beechen bowers;

Poet of the poet-satyr

whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying

in the blissful years again to be,

Summers of the snakeless meadow,

unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

Thou that seest Universal

Nature moved by Universal Mind;

Thou majestic in thy sadness

at the doubtful doom of human kind;

Light among the vanished ages;

star that gildest yet this phantom shore;

Golden branch amid the shadows,

kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer,

fallen every purple Caesar's dome - 

Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm

sound for ever of Imperial Rome - 

Now the Rome of slaves hath perished,

and the Rome of freemen holds her place,

I, from out the Northern Island

sundered once from all the human race,

I salute thee, Mantovano,

I that loved thee since my day began,

Wielder of the stateliest measure

ever moulded by the lips of man.