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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Ruins of Cornelia’s House

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Baja (Baiæ)

Ruins of Cornelia’s House

By Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788–1846)

I TURN from ruins of imperial power,

Tombs of corrupt delight, old walls the pride

Of statesmen pleased for respite brief to hide

Their laurelled foreheads in the Muses’ bower,

And seek Cornelia’s home. At sunset’s hour

How oft her eyes, that wept no more, descried

Yon purpling hills! How oft she heard that tide

Fretting as now low cave or hollow tower!

The mother of the Gracchi! Scipio’s child!—

’T was virtue such as hers that built her Rome!

Never towards it she gazed! Far off her home

She made, like her great father self-exiled.

Woe to the nations when the souls they bare,

Their best and bravest, choose their rest elsewhere!