With Shelley in Italy : being a selection of the poems and letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley which have to do with his life in Italy from 1818 to 1822 . lmost breathing creations of genius yet subsist-ing in their perfection ? What has become, you will ask,of the Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol ?What of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon ? Whatof Raflaelle and Guido ? These things are best spoken ofwhen the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms; andlittle indeed can I, who must devote no more than a fewmonths to the contemplation of them, hope to know or feelof their prof
With Shelley in Italy : being a selection of the poems and letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley which have to do with his life in Italy from 1818 to 1822 . lmost breathing creations of genius yet subsist-ing in their perfection ? What has become, you will ask,of the Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol ?What of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon ? Whatof Raflaelle and Guido ? These things are best spoken ofwhen the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms; andlittle indeed can I, who must devote no more than a fewmonths to the contemplation of them, hope to know or feelof their profound beauty. I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressionson me on my first visit to this city. The next most con-siderable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is theThermae of Caracalla. These consist of six enormouschambers, above 200 feet in height, and each inclosing avast space like that of a field. There are, in addition, anumber of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden andwoven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Neverwas any desolation more sublime and lovely. The per-[92] A COUNKR of thu Forumin Slullcvs * 1 walk forth in the purple and i/uUlen light of an Italian evening, and return hy star or moonlight. . I see the radiant Orion through the mighty columns of the temple of Saturn, and the mellow fading light softens down the modern buildings of Ihe capitol/ — Letter from Rome, p. 96. THE YEAR 1819 pendiciilar wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines filled upwith flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knot-ted in the rifts of the stones. At every step the aerialpinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinationsof effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as thedistant mountains change their asjject to one travellingrapidly along the plain. The perpendicular walls resemblenothing more than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is over-grown with wood, and yet is stony and precipitous — youknow the one I mean; not
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