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 vanish'd 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 forever of Imperial Rome--

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd,
      and the Rome of freemen holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Island
      sunder'd 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.