Chapter III

Now by the glimm’ring torch’s ray
I tread Pozzuoli’s cavern’d way--
Hollow grot! that might beseem
Th’ Ætnean cyclop, Polypheme:
And here the bat at noonday ’bides,
And here the houseless beggar hides,
While the holy hermit’s voice
Glads me with accustom’d noise.
Now I trace, or trav’llers err,
Modest Maro’s sepulchre,
Where nature, sure of his intent,
Is studious to conceal
That eminence he always meant
We should not see but feel.
While Sannazarius from the steep
Views, well pleas’d, the fertile deep
Give life to them that seize the scaly fry,
And to their poet--_immortality_.