CXLII.

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,

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My voice sounds much—and fall the stars' faint rays 25 On the arena void. seats crush'd - walls bow'd

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII.

A ruin― yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd'
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

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When the colossal fabric's form is near'd;

It will not bear the brightness of the day,

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Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.

CXLIV.

But when the rising moon begins to climb

Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,

And the low night-breeze waves along the air

The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,

Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;

When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot 'tis on their dust ye tread.

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CXLV.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls the World." From our own land Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall

In Saxon times, which we are wont to call

Ancient; and these three mortal things are still

On their foundations, and unalter'd all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,

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The World, the same wide den of thieves, or what ye

will.

[THE COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT.]

MANFRED, ACT III., SCENE 4.

THE stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.

Beautiful!

I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learn'd the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,

When I was wandering- upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bay'd beyond the Tiber: and,
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long crv, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song

Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach

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Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. - Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levell'd battlements,

And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;

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But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,

A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

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And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon

All this, and cast a wide and tender light,

Which soften'd down the hoar austerity

Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,

As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;

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Leaving that beautiful which still was so,

And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

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'Twas such a night!

'Tis strange that I recall it at this time;

But I have found our thoughts take wildest flight
Even at the moment when they should array
Themselves in pensive order.

[ST. PETER'S.]

CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV.

CLIII.

BUT lo! the dome the vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana's marvel was a cell

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell

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The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd;

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone — with nothing like to thee-
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook His former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow.

CLVI.

Thou movest but increasing with the advance,

Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance ;

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Vastness which grows but grows to harmonize
All musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles richer painting-shrines where flame
The lamps of gold—and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clouds must
claim.

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CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole ;
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye- so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control

Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
In mighty graduations, part by part,

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The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

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CLVIII.

Not by its fault - but thine: Our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp—and as it is

That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice

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Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
The fountain of sublimity displays

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Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man

Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.