TO ROME BURIED IN ITS RUINS

You search in Rome for Rome, oh wanderer!,
and yet in Rome itself you don't find Rome:
the walls boasting its fame are now a corpse,
the Aventine now serves as its own tomb.

It lies now where the Palatine once reigned;
and its medallions, worn away by time,
show more the devastation of the battles
of the ages than great Latium's pride.

Only the Tiber has remained, whose flow,
if once a city watered, now, a grave,
it mourns for her with brokenhearted tones.

Oh Rome!, of all your greatness, your allure,
that which was firm has fled, and nothing but
what is elusive stays and will endure.