THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, VOL. 8 (Completed)

III - AT ROME

[Sight is at first sight a sad enemy to imagination and to those pleasures belonging to old times with which some exertions of that power will always mingle: nothing perhaps brings this truth home to the feelings more than the city of Rome; not so much in respect to the impression made at the moment when it is first seen and looked at as a whole, for then the imagination may be invigorated and the mind's eye quickened; but when particular spots or objects are sought out, disappointment is I believe invariably felt. Ability to recover from this disappointment will exist in proportion to knowledge, and the power of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and parts and to make details in the present subservient to more adequate comprehension of the past.--I.F.]

Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill?

Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful Rock,

Tarpeian named of yore,[107] and keeping still

That name, a local Phantom proud to mock

The Traveller's expectation?--Could our Will

Destroy the ideal Power within, 'twere done

Thro' what men see and touch,--slaves wandering on,

Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.

Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;

Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,

From that depression raised, to mount on high

With stronger wing, more clearly to discern

Eternal things; and, if need be, defy

Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.

[107] The Tarpeian rock, from which those condemned to death were hurled, is not now precipitous, as it used to be: the ground having been much raised by successive heaps of ruin.--ED.