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LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learn'd,
Yet such the fix'd inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

LXXVII.

1

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart,
Yet fare thee well-upon Soracte's ridge we part.

LXXVIII.

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.

1 [Lord Byron's prepossession against Horace is not without a parallel. It was not till released from the duty of reading Virgil as a task, that Gray could feel himself capable of enjoying the beauties of that poet. - MOORE.]

LXXIX.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands, 1
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; 2
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.

LXXX.

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?

I am

["I have been some days in Rome the Wonderful. delighted with Rome. As a whole-ancient and modern, -it beats Greece, Constantinople, every thing- at least that I have ever seen. But I can't describe, because my first impressions are always strong and confused, and my memory selects and reduces them to order, like distance in the landscape, and blends them better, although they may be less distinct. have been on horse

back most of the day, all days since my arrival. I have been to Albano, its lakes, and to the top of the Alban Mount, and to Frescati, Aricia, &c. As for the Coliseum, Pantheon, St. Peter's, the Vatican, Palatine, &c. &c.— they are quite inconceivable, and must be seen."- Byron Letters, May, 1817.]

2 For a comment on this and the two following stanzas, the reader may consult "Historical Illustrations," p. 46.

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LXXXI.

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 clearWhen but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

LXXXII.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs 1! 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

[free! That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was

LXXXIII.

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

1 Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers.

LXXXIV.

The dictatorial wreath 1,-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!

LXXXV.

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-

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-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

[breath. 2

Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his

1 Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul.-(" Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyais que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucune amour pour la gloire je voyais bien que votre âme était haute; mais je ne soupçonnais pas qu'elle fut grande."-Dialogues de Sylla et d'Eucrate.)

2 On the 3d of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

LXXXVI.

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!

LXXXVII.

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in1
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?

LXXXVIII.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! 2
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?

1,2 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," Nos. XXIV. XXV.

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