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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXVI

The majesty of Rome to me is nought;
The imperial story of her conquering car
Touches me only with compassionate thought
For the doomed nations faded by her star.
Her palaces of Caesars tombstones are
For a whole world of freedoms vainly caught
In her high fortune. Throned was she in war;
By war she perished. So is justice wrought.
A nobler Rome is here, which shall not die.
She rose from the dead ashes of men's lust,
And robed herself anew in chastity,
And half redeemed man's heritage of dust.
This Rome I fain would love, though darkly hid
In mists of passion and desires scarce dead.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Rome

O thou newcomer who seek’st Rome in Rome
And find’st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman;
Arches worn old and palaces made common
Rome’s name alone within these walls keeps home.

Behold how pride and ruin can befall
One who hath set the whole world ’neath her laws,
All-conquering, now conquered, because
She is Time’s prey, and Time conquereth all.

Rome that art Rome’s one sole last monument,
Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town,
Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent,

Remains of Rome. O world, thou unconstant mime!
That which stands firm in thee Time batters down,
And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift Time.

poem by Ezra Pound
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Epitaph To Rome

If midst Rome you wish to see Rome, pilgrim,
Tho in Rome naught of Rome might you see,
Behold the walls' ring, the theatres, temples
And ruptured pillars, to rubble all turned,
Rome be these! Mark how the corpse of a city
So strong still past fortune's pomp exudes;
Subduing a world, herself the city subdued
Lest yet more to subdue might there be.
Today in broken Rome, Rome unbroken
(A substance in its shadow) lies entombed.
Within all's changed; alone past change
Tiber remains, that to sea runs mixed with sand.
See what Fortune plays: 'tis wasted away,
What was unmoving; what moved, yet remains.

poem by Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski
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Back To Rome

One day its the morning
Another day its the afternoon light
On day, baby, without warning
Well, I tend to think were going back to rome
Back to rome
We had a dream it was behemoth
Im so sorry that I didnt work out
And Im sorry about the visigoths
Well, I think its time that we go back to rome
Back to rome
Dont you wish that we could stay?
Were going back to rome
Life is so fine
Then it goes wrong
Wrong
You think its going to miss you but that sun bitch gon get you
Yeah, it goes wrong
Wrong
Sun bitch gon get you
I believed in the cupid
I thought Id kiss you for all my life
I guess Im just a little stupid
Now Im going back to rome
Back to rome
Now I just cant wait
Im going back to rome
Love is so high
Then it goes wrong
Wrong
You think its going to miss you but that sun bitch gon get you
Yeah, it goes wrong
Wrong
Sun bitch gon get you

song performed by by Frank Black
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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North Atlantic Drift

Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Its a cultural shift its the North Atlantic Drift
Americana and a rule Britannia
And the moon yes we own that to
And where the Euphrates meets the other rivers
Is now the home of the devil and the liar
And the pyre we plan to make
Is just the drift leaving its wake, home
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
And the films you want to watch
And the films you want to make
And the kids like lost angels
Dressed in black sensations
And the shift won? shake
And the drift won? brake
With billions of Diamonds growing like olives
And the drift holds the coffers
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns
Meanwhile Rome burns

song performed by by Ocean Colour Scene
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Roman Elegies I

Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
eternal Rome, only for me all’s still.
Who will whisper to me, at what window
will I see the sweet thing who will kindle me, and quicken?
Already I guess the ways, walking to her and from her,
ever and always I’ll go, while sweet time slips by.
I’m gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,
like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,
but soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,
Love’s temple, receiving its new initiate.
Though you are a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
the world’s not the world, Rome cannot be Rome.

poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Roman Girl's Song

Rome, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been!
On thy seven hills of yore
Thou satst a queen.

Thou hadst thy triumphs then
Purpling the street,
Leaders and sceptred men
Bow'd at thy feet.

They that thy mantle wore,
As gods were seen–
Rome, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been!

Rome! thine imperial brow
Never shall rise:
What hast thou left thee now?
Thou hast thy skies!

Blue, deeply blue, they are,
Gloriously bright!
Veiling thy wastes afar
With colour'd light.

Thou hast the sunset's glow,
Rome, for thy dower,
Flushing tall cypress-bough,
Temple and tower!

And all sweet sounds are thine,
Lovely to hear,
While night, o'er tomb and shrine,
Rests darkly clear.

Many a solemn hymn,
By starlight sung,
Sweeps thro' the arches dim,
Thy wrecks among.

Many a flute's low swell,
On thy soft air
Lingers, and loves to dwell
With summer there.

Thou hast the South's rich gift
Of sudden song,
A charmed fountain, swift,
Joyous, and strong.

Thou hast fair forms that move
With queenly tread;
Thou hast proud fanes above
Thy mighty dead.

Yet wears thy Tiber's shore
A mournful mien:
Rome, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been!

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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We cannot afford more of this modern day Rome

Being positive, transcendent while neglecting your emotional pain, being blind to it while unconsciously projecting your hurts into others, will still cause you to succeed materially, you will still obtain your abundance, your vast wealth, Rome, The Roman Empire is a good example, you will have your desires, but at a dehumanizing cost.

We cannot afford more of this modern day Rome. Now Rome can not only destroy itself but all life. Then what, will we get a free ride on another planet. We are just going to be so welcome and simply fit in after our self-destruction. Are we that arrogant where we think we will not have to start over from dust?

poem by Michael Kavuoti
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From One Augur to Another

So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine,
You thought of Mopsus, and o'er wastes of sea
A flower brought your message. I divine
(Through my deep art) the kindly mockery
That played about your lips and in your eyes,
Plucking the frail leaf, while you dreamed of home.
Thanks for the silent greeting! I shall prize,
Beyond June's rose, the scentless flower of Rome.
All the Campagna spreads before my sight,
The mouldering wall, the Caesars' tombs unwreathed,
Rome and the Tiber, and the yellow light,
Wherein the honey-colored blossom breathed.
But most I thank it--egoists that we be!
For proving then and there you thought of me.

poem by Emma Lazarus
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The Roman Gravemounds

By Rome's dim relics there walks a man,
Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade;
I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;
Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.

'Vast was Rome,' he must muse, 'in the worlds regard,
Vast it looms there still, Vast it ever will be;'
And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard
Left by those who are held in such memory.

But no; in his basket, see, he has brought
A little white furred thing, stiff of limb,
Whose life never won from the world a thought;
It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.

And to make it a grave he has come to the spot,
And he delves in the ancient dead's long home;
Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not;
The furred thing is all to him - nothing Rome!

'Here say you that Caesar's warriors lie? -
But my little white cat was my only friend!
Could she but live, might the record die
Of Caesar, his legions, his aims, his end!'

Well, Rome's long rule here is oft and again
A theme for the sages of history,
And the small furred life was worth no one's pen;
Yet its mourner's mood has a charm for me.

poem by Thomas Hardy
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When In Rome

When in Rome,
One should adjust to do...
Those activities that Romans choose.
It is not one's place,
To advocate...
What IS or IS NOT acceptable.
Or in poor taste.

When 'not' in Rome...
And that visit of condoning,
Has been left behind and alone...
There is no obligated need,
To continue to feed those traditions.

And 'when' one finds it comforting,
To do what one wishes in one's own home...
That's when it is best to profess and address one's beliefs.
With a feeling,
If one so desires...
To dismiss what is not suitable or fits.
In one's 'own' environment.
With no debate or argument to invite about this.

When 'not' in Rome.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome.

quote by John Lothrop Motley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Old Gods.

O ye gods, if you could tell us
What ye are — if banned or blest —
Ye that reigned of old in Hellas!
Ye that ruled the radiant West!
Old-born gods! The Past still flashes
In the eyes of Greece and Rome;
Ye are not mere dust and ashes
Urned for all the years to come.
Ye that ruled in heavenly places,
And the faith of mortals won!
Gods created by old races
Perished from beneath the sun;
Born of faith, and with it blended,
Ye shall yet the world inspire
Till the last breath has ascended
From the latest altar fire.
All the hopes and invocations
Breathed by lips of heroes dead,
All the genius of the nations
Who the march of Freedom led —
Though your temples broke and fell as
Dusty fanes of little worth —
These will keep you, gods of Hellas!
Still alive upon the earth.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Ideals

Better than land or gold or trade
Are a high ideal and a purpose true;
Better than all of the wealth we've made
Is the work for others that now we do.
For Rome grew rich and she turned to song
And danced to music and drank her wine,
But she sapped the strength of her fibres strong
And a gilded shroud was her splendor fine.

The Rome of old with its wealth and wine
Was the handiwork of a sturdy race;
They builded well and they made it fine
And they dreamed of it as their children's place.
They thought the joys they had won to give,
And which seemed so certain and fixed and sure,
To the end of time in the world would live
And the Rome they'd fashioned would long endure.

They passed to their children the hoarded gold,
Their marble halls and their fertile fields!
But not the spirit of Rome of old,
Nor the Roman courage that never yields.
They left them the wealth that their hands had won,
But they failed to leave them a purpose true.
They left them thinking life's work all done,
And Rome went down and was lost to view.

We must guard ourselves lest we follow Rome.
We must leave our children the finer things.
We must teach them love of the spot called home
And the lasting joy that a purpose brings.
For vain are our Flag and our battles won,
And vain are our lands and our stores of gold,
If our children feel that life's work is done.
We must give them a high ideal to hold.

poem by Edgar Albert Guest
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At A House In Hampstead Sometime The Dwelling Of John Keats

O poet, come you haunting here
Where streets have stolen up all around,
And never a nightingale pours one
Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,
Thought you to find all just the same
Here shining, as in hours of old,
If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise
At seeing that changes wrought in Rome
Are wrought yet more on the misty slope
One time your home?

Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?
Swing the doors open noisily?
Show as an umbraged ghost beside
Your ancient tree?

Or will you, softening, the while
You further and yet further look,
Learn that a laggard few would fain
Preserve your nook? . . .

-Where the Piazza steps incline,
And catch late light at eventide,
I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,
''Twas here he died.'

I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,
Where day and night a pyramid keeps
Uplifted its white hand, and said,
''Tis there he sleeps.'

Pleasanter now it is to hold
That here, where sang he, more of him
Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,
Passed to the dim.

July 1920

poem by Thomas Hardy
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I look at Rome; She has nearly three thousand years of civilization, but she flows as if she were new, looking as young and carefree as water when she makes water. A city where art and culture predominate more than anything else.
Overall, Rome is a mysterious city. The ancient ruins on the one hand suggest the glory of the Roman Empire, on the other they strike the opulence and grandeur of the Baroque buildings. And last but not least, be captivated by the speed and crazy rhythms of today's civilization translated into the huge number of tourists in the city, flooded with people, cameras and souvenirs. Everyone chooses his Rome, be it imperial, baroque or modern. But for everyone the city, once the center of the world, is a real historical symbol.

Camelia Oprița in book Wall of thoughts (We look for the past to invent the future) (2000)
Submitted by Livius Ciocarlie
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AAAC) Rome

In old Rome everybody did his own work.
There were the slaves all over the world,
Unluckily the world has not changed,
Luckily those slaves could become freedmen.
The ten ases coin valued more than the Greek dram,
The Romans did not devalue their denarius.
As a kid one read about old Rome hoping to grow up.
Machiavelli dreamt he came back to old Rome changing his clothes in the evening.
We held our suits and have our homework.
A Lady gave her daughter a copper jewel box as a dowry.
We know she's a great catch that girl with her cista Ficoroni.

poem by Paolo Giuseppe Mazzarello
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France

Because for once the sword broke in her hand,
The words she spoke seemed perished for a space;
All wrong was brazen, and in every land
The tyrants walked abroad with naked face.

The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star
Of evil fate denying all release.
The rulers smote, the feeble crying "War!"
The usurers robbed, the naked crying "Peace!"

And her own feet were caught in nets of gold,
And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm,
And little men climbed her high seats and sold
Her honour to the vulture and the worm.

And she seemed broken and they thought her dead,
The Over-Men, so brave against the weak.
Has your last word of sophistry been said,
O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak.

Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes,
As slow mists parted over Valmy fell,
And once again her hands in high surprise
Take hold upon the battlements of Hell.

poem by Cecil Edward Chesterton from Poems of the Great War
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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To Virgil

Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of
Virgil's Death

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.

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Rimini

Marching Song of a Roman Legion of the Later Empire

When I left Rome for Lalage's sake,
By the Legions' Road to Rimini,
She vowed her heart was mine to take
With me and my shield to Rimini--
(Till the Eagles flew from Rimini--)
And I've tramped Britain, and I've tramped Gaul
And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall
As white as the neck of Lalage--
(As cold as the heart of Lalage!)
And I've lost Britain, and I've lost Gaul,
And I've lost Rome and, worst of all,
I've lost Lalage!

When you go by the Via Aurelia
As thousands have traveled before
Remember the Luck of the Soldier
Who never saw Rome any more!
Oh, dear was the sweetheart that kissed him,
And dear was the mother that bore;
But his shield was picked up in the heather,
And he never saw Rome any more!

And he left Rome, etc.

When you go by the Via Aurelia
That runs from the City to Gaul,
Remember the Luck of the Soldier
Who rose to be master of all!
He carried the sword and the buckler,
He mounted his guard on the Wall,
Till the Legions elected him Caesar,
And he rose to be master of all!

And he left Rome, etc.

It's twenty-five marches to Narbo,
It's forty-five more up the Rhone,
And the end may be death in the heather
Or life on an Emperor's throne.
But whether the Eagles obey us,
Or we go to the Ravens--alone,
I'd sooner be Lalage's lover
Than sit on an Emperor's throne!

We've all left Rome for Lalage's sake, etc.

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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When In Rome

Well, you must be from the city
'Cause you sure ain't from round here
There ain't no smoke free section
We don't sell no import beer.
You been throwin' round that attitude
Since you walked in that door
I don't know where you come from
But you ain't there anymore
When in Rome,
You can do like the Roman's
But, when your down home
You better do like us.
You been lookin' down your nose
At our water tower town
Ain't no one getting rich
But, there's enough to go around.
If ya don't like tracy's cookin'
Well, ya best still leave a tip
She's back there in that kitchen
With a baby on her hip.
When in Rome,
You can do like the Roman's
But, when your down home
You better do like us.
You put your best foot forward
When you go to meet a man
Look him in the eye
And put a good grip on his hand.
Don't cuss around the ladies
Tell us how to raise our kids
We like doing business
Like our daddys, daddys did.
When you drive off in your beamer
If ya don't do 35
Don't give no lip to Beuford
Or he might just dot your eye.
And when your at the courthouse
Before Ole judge McCall
You best not say a word
About them comandments on his wall.
Naw!
When in Rome,
You can do like the Roman's
But when your down home
You better do like us.
Yeah, Yeah Yeah
When in Rome,
You can do like the Roman's
But when your down home
You better do like us.
Mmmm Hmmmm
Better do like us boy
Don't you come in here talking all that trash
Ya just might get your nose smashed.
When in Rome,
You can do like the Roman's...

song performed by by Travis Tritt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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