Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA, by WILLIAM SHARP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ACQUA PAOLA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Not where thy turbid wave
Last Line: Thy turbid wave.
Alternate Author Name(s): Macleod, Fiona
Subject(s): Fountains; Rome, Italy


Not where thy turbid wave
Flowing Maremma-ward,
Moves heavily, Tiber,
Through Rome the Eternal,
Not there her music, not there her joy is:
But where on Janiculum
The tall pines
Sing their high song, with deeper therein, like an echo
Heard in a mountain-hollow where cataracts break,
A sound as of surge and of foaming:
Yes, there where the echoing pines
Whisper to high wandering wird;
The rush and the surge and the splendour
Where the Acqua Paola thunders
Into its fount gigantic,
With noise like a tempest cleaving
With mighty wings
The norland forests.
From dayspring, yellow and green
And grey as a swan's breastfeather,
To sunset's amber and gold
And the white star of dusk,
And through the moon-white hours
Till only Hesperus hangs
His quivering tremulous disc
O'er the faint-flushed forehead of Dawn --
All hours, all days, forever
Surgeth the singing flood,
With chant and paean glorious;
With foam and splash and splendour,
A music wild, barbaric,
That calleth loud over Rome,
Laughing, mocking, rejoicing:
The sound of the waves when Ocean
Laughs at the vanishing land
And, fronting her shoreless leagues,
Remembers the ruined empires
That now are the drift and shingle
In cavernous hollows under
Her zone of Oblivion,
Silence that nought shall break,
Eternal calm.

Foam, spray and splendour
Of rushing waters,
Grey-blue as the pale blue dome
That circleth the morning star
While still his fires are brighter
Than the wanwhite fire of the moon.
Foam, spray, and surge
Of rushing waters!
O the hot flood of sunshine
Yellowly pouring
Over and into thee, jubilant Fountain:
Thy cataracts filled
With vanishing rainbows,
Shimmering lights
As thought the Aurora's
Wild polar fires
Flashed in thy happy bubbles, died in thy foam.

Ever in joyous laughter
Thy wavelets are dancing,
Little waves with crests bright with sunlight
Tossing their foamy arms,
Laughing and leaping,
Whirling, inweaving,
Rippling at last and sleepily laving
The mossed stone-barriers
That clasp them round.
Bright too and joyous,
They, in the moonshine,
When the falling waters
Are as wreaths of snow
Falling for ever
Down mountain-flanks;
Like melting snows
In the high hill-hollows
Seen from the valleys
And seeming to fall,
To fall forever
A flower of water,
Silent, and stirred not
By any wind.

Bright too and joyous
In darkling nights,
When the moon shroudeth
Her face in a veil
Of cloudy vapours,
Or, like a flower
I' the wane of its beauty,
Droopeth and falleth
Till lost to sight,
Stoopeth and fadeth
Into the dark --
Or when like a sickle
Thin and silvern
She moveth slowly
Through the starry fields,
Moveth slowly
'Mid the flowers of the stars
In the harvest-fields
Of Eternity:
Bright too and joyous,
For then the shadows
Play with the foam-lights,
With the flying whiteness;
And snowy surging.
But brighter, more joyous,
Save when the moon-flower
In all her splendour
Floats on thy bosom,
Or, rather, dreameth
Deep in the heart of thee
O happy Fountain:
Brighter, more joyous,
Thee, when amidst thee,
Strewn through thy waters,
The stars are sown
As seed multitudinous,
As silvern seed
In thy shadowy-furrows:
Seed of the skiey flowers
That in the heavens
Bloom forever,
Blossoms and blooms of
Eternal splendour.
Then is thy joy most;
O jubilant Fountain;
Then are thy waters
Sweetest of song;
Then do thy waters
Surge, leap, rejoicing,
Lave, and lapse slowly
To haunted stillness
And darkling dreams:
Then is thy music rarest,
Wildest and sweetest
Music of Rome --
Rome the Eternal,
Through whose heart of shadow
Moveth slowly
Flowing Maremma-ward
Thy murmur, Tiber,
Thy muffled voice,
Whom none interpreteth
But boding, ominous,
Is as the sound of
Murmurous seas
Heard afar inland --
There, where Maremma-ward
Flowing heavily,
Moveth, Tiber,
Thy turbid wave.





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