Two architects of Italy—austere
Men who could fashion nothing small—refused
To die with life, and for their purpose used
This dim and topless Amphitheatre.
Some Cæsar trench’d the orb of its ellipse
And call’d on distant provinces to swell
Resonant arches whence his World could scan,
Tier above tier, the fighters and the ships.
But Dante—having raised, as dreamer can,
Higher tenfold these walls immutable—
Sole in the night arena, grew aware
He was himself the thing spectacular
Seized by the ever-thirsting gaze of Hell,—
Here, on the empty sand, a banish’d man.