To Virgil

by Alfred Lord 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.