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Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII.

Once more upon the woody Apennine,
The infant Alps, which-had I not before
Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine-might be worshipp'd
more; (39)

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near,
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,

LXXIV.

H

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, For still they soar'd unutterably high: I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye; Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made These hills seem things of lesser dignity, Alf, save the lone Soracte's height, display'd Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake

The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,
The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word

(40)

In my repugnant youth with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recals 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 would relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore

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

LXXVII.

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.

LXXIX.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless wo;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; (41)
The very sculptures lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her dis

tress.

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 monarch's 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?

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

VOL. I.-0

Our hands, and cry "Eureka?" it is clear-When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

LXXXII.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! (42) 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!

LXXXIII.

Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel, (43)

Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou would 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--

LXXXIV.

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!

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-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.

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. (44) 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 in (45)
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

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