Whence then this transformation, that pervades
Rome’s very air, and leaves its blighting trace
Alike upon the Pincio’s colonnades
And on the Mausoleum’s rugged face?

The fault, dear Rome, is neither thine nor mine,
But that of vandals nurtured on thy breast,
Who, mad as “modern citizens” to shine,
Have fashioned thee like cities of the west.

Thy time-worn face, and figure deeply bowed
By countless sufferings for two thousand years,
Whose proper garment seemed to be a shroud,
Commanding reverence, sympathy and tears,

Are now bedecked with tawdry gems of paste;
Parisian robes thy withered limbs conceal;
Thy wrinkled cheeks are rouged; in vulgar taste
A modern watch-fob holds the Caesar’s seal!

Where once imperial Triumphs proudly passed,
Electric cars roll thundering through thy streets;
In Raphael’s groves the automobile’s blast
Expels the Muses from their calm retreats.

Through sinuous miles of shops with worldly wares
Bewildered pilgrims reach St. Peter’s shrine;
Some modern stamp each old piazza, bears;
And freed from weeds, thy burnished ruins shine!

Near Hadrian’s massive bridge of sculptured stone,
The Tiber surges ’neath an iron frame,
Across whose ugly beams the tramcars groan,
And brand the river with a bar of shame.

Gods of Olympus, can ye not restore
To outraged Rome her dignity of old? 
’Twere better Jove and Juno to adore
Than in their stead to worship only Gold!

Thy glorious statues, cruelly defaced,
Thy crumbling shrines, thy marbles burnt to lime,
The lone Campagna’s fever-stricken waste,
Where lizards bask on columns once sublime,—­

The Flavian Amphitheatre’s gaping wounds,
The Baths of Caracalla’s roofless walls,
The Forum’s multitude of ruined mounds,
The royal Palatine’s abandoned halls,—­

All these indeed create a hopeless pain,
When fancy strives to reconstruct the whole,
Yet pathos, wakened by a wreck-strewn plain,
Inspires at least nobility of soul.

But where a Syndic’s greed hath left its trail
The picturesque and beautiful take flight;
The Past’s inspiring influences fail,
As stars are hidden by electric light.

Yet protests meet derision and disdain;
The fatal madness spreads from land to land;
Peace, Art, and Beauty everywhere are slain
By greedy Traffic’s hard, rapacious hand.

We laugh at lessons taught by others’ fate,
We see no ending to our prosperous day;
Forgetting that, in turn, each ancient State
Hath passed through bud and flower to decay.

Behold the retrogression of those lands
Whence painting, sculpture and the drama sprung;
See starved Trinacria’s outstretched, empty hands,
And all the classic shores by Homer sung!

In what have we surpassed them?  We are taught
Their art, their ethics, and their rythmic speech;
Both Greece and Asia still control our thought,
Their grandest works still far beyond our reach.