Poetry Archives

By Lake Como’s sylvan shore,
    Where the wavelets evermore
Seem to rhythmically murmur of the classic days of yore,
    Cease, O boatman, now to row!
    While the Alpine summits glow,
Let me dream that I am floating on the lake of long ago.

    Where the Tremezzina ends,
    And the bay of Lenno bends
Till the shadow of the mountain to its placid wave descends,
    On this strand of silver foam
    Stood the Younger Pliny’s home,
When the world at last lay subject to the dominance of Rome.

    Here he passed his sweetest hours
    ’Mid his statues, books, and flowers
With a life and list of pleasures not dissimilar to ours,
    For the city’s rush and roar
    Never reached this tranquil shore,
And his writings prove completely that he yearned for them no more.

    Here, as scholar, poet, sage,
    He filled many a pliant page
With the philosophic wisdom and refinement of his age,
    And his letters to his peers
    Through a life of smiles and tears
Make me often quite forgetful of the intervening years;

    For the beauty of the bay
    And the magical display
Of its coronet of mountains have not altered since his day,
    And the lake of which he wrote
    At that epoch so remote
With the same caressing murmur laps my undulating boat.

    Hence the subtle, tender spell
    Of the place he loved so well
Holds me captive and enchanted, as these waters gently swell,
    And a vague and nameless pain
    Makes me long for,—though in vain—,
That delightful classic era, which will never come again.

    Since the Goths’ invading tide
    Wrecked Rome’s potency and pride,
Something wonderful has vanished, something exquisite has died;
    And in spite of modern fame
    And the lustre of its name,
Even beautiful Lake Como can be never quite the same.

    So beside its sylvan shore,
    Where the wavelets evermore
Seem to rythmically murmur of the classic days of yore,
    Cease, O boatman, now to row!
    For, while Alpine summits glow,
I would dream that I am floating on the lake of long ago.