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ROMAN RUINS.

How could Rome live so long, and now be dead?
How came this waste and wilderness of stones?
How shows the orbèd monster, so long fed

On martyr-blood, his bare and crumbling bones?
Did the strong Faith, that built eight hundred years
Of world-dominion on a robber's name,
Once animate this corse, and fervent seers
Augur it endless life and shadeless fame?

Stranger! if thou a docile heart dost bring
Within thee, bear a timely precept hence ;
That Power, mere Power, is but a barren thing,
Even when it seems most like omnipotence;
The forms must pass,-and past, they leave behind
Little to please, and nought to bless mankind.

ANTIQUES.

PLATEN.

FREE! let us free,-throw open the doors, lay open the

presses,

Here in the dark and the dust is it seemly for us to be

dwelling?

What we, and where we have been, oh! remember, and give us your pity.

Once this rare old Vase was the pride of the gardens of

Egypt,

And Cleopatra herself bade her courtiers fill it with

:

myrtle :

This so daintily carved, this duplicate layer of Onyx,
On thy finger, Antinous, rested, a jewel unvalued—
Thine, thou beautiful Boy, too soon sped away to thy
heaven.

I, God Hermes, stood in the hall of Cæsar Augustus,—
Breath of the odorous south from crowns of bay was shed

o'er me;

Now have Ye piled us together and ranged us in cruel confusion,

Each one pressing his fellow, and each of us shading his

brother,

None in a fitting abode, in the life-giving play of the

sunshine!

Wearying even the eyes of gaping and vain " cognoscenti," Here in disorder we lie, like desolate bones in a charnel, Waking, in those that can feel, deep sense of sorrowful yearning

For the magnificent days, when, as all but alive, we were honoured.

Ye too,―cull ye no roses, no fresh-blowing braids, to be wreathed

Round the Etrurian vase and brow of the Parian marble? Ye too, have ye no temples, no pleachèd arcades in your gardens,

Where ye can take us, and plant us, all near the unperishing heavens,

After our own sweet wont, to the joy of the pious beholder?

ON A SCENE IN TUSCANY.

WHAT good were it to dim the pleasure-glow,
That lights thy cheek, fair Girl, in scenes like these,
By shameful facts, and piteous histories ?

While we enjoy, what matters what we know?

What tender love-sick looks on us below

Those Mountains cast! how courteously the Trees
Raise up their branching heads in calices

For the thick Vine to fill and overflow !
This nature is like Thee, all-bright, all-mild;
If then some self-wise man should say, that here
Hate, sin, and death held rule for many a year,
That of this kindliest earth there 's not a rood
But has been saturate with brother's blood,-
Believe him not, believe him not, my Child.

TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,

AGED NINE YEARS.

SWEET, serious Child,-strange Boy! I fain would know
Why, when I fondly talk and sport with thee,
I never miss the exuberant heart-flow

Which is the especial charm of infancy :
Thou art so wise, so sober,-nothing wild,-
I hardly think, yet feel, thou art a child.

For had the formal bondage of a school

Checked the gay outgrowth of thy vernal years, Encumbered thy light wings with vulgar rule,

And dimmed the blossoms in thy cheeks with tears,— Thou mightst have been as grave, as still, as now, But not with that calm smile, that placid brow.

Nor has the knowledge of dull manly things,
And intellect grown ripe before its time,
Defiled thy being's freshly-salient springs,

And made thee conscious of a world of crime ;

With all thy earnest looks, as spirit-free

As ever infant dancing down the lea.

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