Classic Poem

Proud city, that by the Ligurian sea
Sittest as at a mirror, lofty and fair;
And towering from thy curving banks in air,
Scornest the mountains that attend on thee;
Why, with such structures, to which Italy
Has nothing else, though glorious, to compare,
Hast thou not souls, with something like a share,
Of look, heart, spirit, and ingenuity?

Better to bury at once ('twould cost thee less)
Thy golden-sweating heaps, where cramped from light,
They and their pinched fasts ply their old distress.
Thy rotting wealth, unspent, like a thick blight,
Clouds the close eyes of these:—dark hands oppress
With superstition those:—and all is night.