TO ROME, SEPULCHRED IN HER RUINS

You search in Rome for Rome —oh, peregrine!—
and Rome in Rome itself you cannot find;
the walls she flaunted gape as corpses blind,
its own sepulture is the Aventine.

There lies, where once he reigned, the Palatine;
and Time has rasped her medals down, so that
they look more like the relics of combat
in ages gone than great Latium’s signs.

Only the Tiber yet endures, whose current,
As it once washed the city, now bemoans the
tomb with tones sepulchrally susurrant.

Rome! In your beauty, your magnificence,
All that stood strong and firm has flown, and only
the fugitive remains with permanence.