Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Lord Byron

Copy of the statue of Byron by Bertel Thorvaldsen, Villa Borghese gardens, Rome

Copy (recently vandalized) of the statue of Byron by Bertel Thorvaldsen
(Trinity College Library, Cambridge, 1829)
Villa Borghese gardens
Rome, May 2012

“O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day—
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.”
(Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Stanza LXXVIII)

1 comment:

cieldequimper said...

One of the greatest...