Titus or Trajan's? No-'tis that of Time: Buried in air, the deep-blue sky of Rome, wore His sovereign virtues—still we Trajan's name adore. Where is the rock of Triumph, the high The nympholepsy of some fond despair; The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, Prison'd in marble; bubbling from the base Fantastically tangled; the green hills The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass; Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes sand years of silenced factions sleep-Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; The Forum, where the immortal accents The sweetness of the violet's deep-blue eyes, Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seema colour'd by its skies. below, glow, kad still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero ! The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood: Here a proud people's passions were exhaled. veil'd, And Anarchy assumed her attributes; mutes, Ormised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, leaf, E for thy tomb a garland let it be The chief Her new-born Numa thou with reign, alas! too brief. geria! sweet creation of some heart Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating With her most starry canopy, and seating Of an enamour'd Goddess, and the cell Make them indeed immortal, and impart And root from out the soul the deadly weed Alas! our young affections run to waste, Which found no mortal resting-place so fair Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Athine ideal breast; whate'er thou art Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion And trees whose gums are poison; such the | Antipathies-but to recur, ere long, Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong; And Circumstance, that unspiritual god And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like r Whose touch turns Hope to dust,—the d we all have tro flies O'er the world's wilderness,and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art— Our life is a false nature-'tis not in Even with its own desiring phantasy, Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, Who loves, raves-'tis youth's frenzy-but the cure Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds Ideal shape of such, yet still it binds The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, see throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-ac ever new. Yet let us ponder boldly-'tis a basc Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mi And bred in darkness, lest the truth sho Too brightly on the unprepared mind, The beam pours in, for time and skill v couch the blin Arches on arches! as it were that Rom dome, Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams sh mine We wither from our youth, we gasp away-Of contemplation; and the azure gloo Sick-sick; unfound the boon-unslaked Of an Italian night, where the deep si Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, err, That curse shall be Forgiveness.— Have I And only healer when the heart hath bled-Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, The test of truth, love,-sole philosopher, Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life And only not to desperation driven, And without utterance, save the shrug or Deal round to happy fools its speechless But I have lived, and have not lived in vain : But there is that within me which shall tire Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre, I see before me the Gladiator lie: Then in this magic circle raise the dea Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on th dust ye tread. "While stands the Coliseum, Rome sh stand; From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one," When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fa He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay; There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holidayAll this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire And unavenged?-Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, bow'd And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass But when the rising moon begins to climb wear, Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head; When the light shines serene but doth not glare, our own land Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mig wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to c Ancient; and these three mortal things still On their foundations, and unalter'd all Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's sk The World, the same wide den-of thiev or what ye wil Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublimeShrine of all saints and temple of all go From Jove to Jesus-spared and blest time; Looking tranquillity, while falls or n Arch, empire, each thing round thee, a man plods His way through thorns to ashes-glori dome ! Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe a Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! around them clo There is a dungeon.in whose dim drear li Two insulated phantoms of the brain: With her unmantled neck, and bosom wh and bare? Full swells the deep pure fountain of you life, Where on the heart and from the heart took Our first and sweetest nurture, when wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look. Or even the piping cry of lips that brook a Nopain and small suspense, a joy perceives | Of a sublimer aspect ? Majesty, in Man knows not, when from out its cradled | Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves What may the fruits be yet?—I know not— Cain was Eve's. But here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift:-it is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire While in those warm and lovely veins the fire Of health and holy feeling can provide Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; Than Egypt's river:-from that gentle side = Drink, drink and live, old man ! Heaven's Thou movestrealm holds no such tide. The starry fable of the milky way nurse! brow. but increasing with the advance, Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance ; Vastness which grows-but grows to har monize All musical in its immensitics; So drop of that clear stream its way shall The lamps of gold--and haughty dome miss which vies thr sire's heart, replenishing its source | In air with Earth's chief structures, though ich life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. Blo! the dome the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell--Chit's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb; have beheld the Ephesian's miraclecolumns strew the wilderness; and dwell The hyaena and the jackall in their shade: have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd; He thou, of temples old, or altars new, handest alone-with nothing like to thee Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. Nine Zion's desolation, when that He Forok his former city, what could be, Of earthly structures, in his honour piled, their frame Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim. Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break, To separate contemplation, the great whole; Its eloquent proportions, and unroll Not by its fault-but thine: Our outward sense Is but of gradual grasp-and as it is Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more |