Six thousand years or more on earth I've been: Witness those histories of nations dead, Which for our age I have illustrated In philosophic volumes, scene by scene....
Nero was king by accident in show; But Socrates by nature in good sooth; By right of both Augustus; luck and truth Less perfectly were blent in Scipio. ...
The world's a living creature, whole and great, God's image, praising God whose type it is; We are imperfect worms, vile families, That in its belly have our low estate....
The world's a theatre: age after age, Souls masked and muffled in their fleshly gear Before the supreme audience appear, As Nature, God's own Art, appoints the stage. ...
The first heaven-wandering lights I see ascend Upon the seventh and ninth centenary, When in the Archer's realm three years shall be Added, this aeon and our age to end....
O Death, the wage of our first father's blame, Daughter of envy and nonentity, Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry, Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame!...
The nymphs of Arno; Adria's goddess-queen; Greece, where the Latin banner floated free; The lands that border on the Syrian sea; The Euxine, and fair Naples; these have been...
O Thou, who, mingling Force and Love, dost draw And guide the complex of all entities, Framed for that purpose; whence our reason sees In supreme Fate the synthesis of Law;...
Thy followers to-day are less like Thee, The crucified, than those who made Thee die, Good Jesus, wandering all ways awry From rules prescribed in Thy wise charity....
Wisdom and love, O Bina, gave thee wings, Before the blossom of thy years had faded, To fly with Adam for thy guide, God-aided, Through many lands in divers journeyings....
Telesius, the arrow from thy bow Midmost his band of sophists slays that high Tyrant of souls that think; he cannot fly: While Truth soars free, loosed by the self-same blow....
Valour to pride hath turned; grave holiness To vile hypocrisy; all gentle ways To empty forms; sound sense to idle lays; Pure love to heat; beauty to paint and dress:--...
Ye Alpine rocks! If less your peaks elate To heaven exalt you than that gift divine, Freedom; why do your children still combine To keep the despots in their stolen state?...
Holding the cynic lantern in your hand, Through Europe, Egypt, Asia, you have passed, Till at Ausonia's feet you find at last That Cyclops' cave, where I, to darkness banned,...
New Ark of Noah! when the cruel scourge Of that barbarian tyrant like a wave Went over Italy, thou then didst save The seed of just men on the weltering surge....
Valour and mind form real nobility, The which bears fruit and shows a fair increase By doughty actions: these and nought but these Confer true patents of gentility....
He who hath brush and colours, and chance-wise Doth daub, befouling walls and canvases, Is not a painter; but, unhelped by these, He who in art is masterful and wise....