TO ROME ENTOMBED IN HER RUINS

You look for Rome in Rome, O traveler!
And in very Rome you find not Rome:
A cadaver now what were her vaunted walls,
And the Aventine the graveyard of itself.

Here lies, where once it reigned, the Palatine;
And the medallions, sanded by time,
Seem rather than Latin emblazonments
The rubble of battles of long ago.

Only the Tiber remains; whose tide,
Having as a city watered her, now as a sepulchre
Mourns her with grievous sound of weeping.

O Rome! Of your grandeur, of your beauty
All that was solid has fled, and only
The fugitive stays and endures.