The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. — Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn’d the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, — upon such a night
I stood within the Colosseum’s wall,    
‘Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watchdog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Caesars’ palace came
The owl’s long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach   
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot — where the Caesars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night; amidst
A grove which springs through levell’d battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel’s place of growth; —
But the gladiators’ bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!
While Caesar’s chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. —    
And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which soften’d down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fill’d up,
As ‘twere, anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o’er
With silent worship of the great of old! —
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule  
Our spirits from their urns. —
‘Twas such a night!
‘Tis strange that I recall it at this time;
Rut I have found our thoughts take wildest flight
Even at the moment when they should array
Themselves in pensive order.

 

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~Lord Byron

Manfred Act III - Scene IV