Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DE HORTIS JULII MARTIALIS, by MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS Poet's Biography First Line: My martial owns a garden, famed to please Last Line: You half imagine all to be your own. Alternate Author Name(s): Martial Subject(s): Gardens & Gardening; Rome, Italy | ||||||||
MY Martial owns a garden, famed to please, Beyond the glades of the Hesperides; Along Janiculum lies the chosen block Where the cool grottos trench the hanging rock. The moderate summit, something plain and bare, Tastes overhead of a serener air; And while the clouds besiege the vales below, Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow. To the June stars that circle in the skies The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise. Hence do the seven imperial hills appear; And you may view the whole of Rome from here: Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills; And the cool groves and the cool falling rills, Rubre Fidenae, and with virgin blood Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood. Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way, Stretch far broad below the dome of day; And lo! the traveller toiling toward his home; And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome! For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho' The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber's flow, Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream The sliding barges vanish like a dream, The seaman's shrilling pipe not enters here, Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier. And if so rare the house, how rarer far The welcome and the weal that therein are! So free from access, the doors so widely thrown, You half imagine all to be your own. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THOSE GRAVES IN ROME by LARRY LEVIS ROMAN ELEGIES by JOSEPH BRODSKY ROMAN DIARY: 1951 by JOHN CIARDI VIGNETTES OVERSEAS: 7. ROME by SARA TEASDALE ROMANESQUE ARCHES by TOMAS TRANSTROMER AN APARTMENT WITH A VIEW by JOHN CIARDI MANIFEST DESTINY by JORIE GRAHAM RUINES OF ROME by JOACHIM DU BELLAY DOCTOR FELL by MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS |
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