Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day—
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.
The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climb'd the capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site :- Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say,
"here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err: The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap Our hands, and cry "Eureka!" it is clear— When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page!-but these shall be Her resurrection; all beside-decay.
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel, Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew O'er prostrate Asia;-thou, who with thy frown Annihilated senates-Roman, too,
With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown—
The dictatorial wreath,-couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named Eternal, and array'd
Her warriors but to conquer-she who veil'd Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd, Until the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd,
Her rushing wings-Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd!
Sylla was first of victors; but our own -The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he Too swept off senates while he hew'd the throne Down to a block-immortal rebel! See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages! but beneath His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms and, happier, yield his breath.
The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crown'd him, on the selfsame day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And show'd not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way, Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom!
And thou, dread statue! yet existent in The austerest form of naked majesty,
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din, At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie, Folding his robe in dying dignity,
An offering to thine altar from the queen Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart The milk of conquest yet within the dome Where, as a monument of antique art, Thou standest:-Mother of the mighty heart, Which the great founder suck'd from thy wild teat, Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's etherial dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning-dost thou yet Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
Thou dost ;-but all thy foster-babes are dead- The men of iron; and the world hath rear'd Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they fear'd,
And fought and conquer'd, and the same course steer'd, At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave
The fools of false dominion—and a kind Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould, With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, And an immortal instinct which redeem'd The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd At Cleopatra's feet,-and now himself he beam'd,
And came—and saw-and conquer'd! But the man Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,
Like a train'd falcon, in the Gallic van, Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, With a deaf heart which never seem'd to be A listener to itself, was strangely framed; With but one weakest weakness-vanity, Coquettish in ambition-still he aim'd—
At what? can he avouch-or answer what he claim'd?
And would be all or nothing-nor could wait For the sure grave to level him; few years Had fix'd him with the Cæsars in his fate,
On whom we tread: For this the conqueror rears The arch of triumph! and for this the tears And blood of earth flow on as they have flow'd, An universal deluge, which appears
Without an ark for wretched man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow!-Renew thy rainbow, God!
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