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'

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

VOL. II.

breath.

K

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
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! 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 t Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's etherial dart, And thy limbs black with lightning-dost thou Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forg

LXXXIX.

Thou dost ;-but all thy foster-babes are dead

The men of iron; and the world hath rear'd
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they fear'd,

And fought and conquer'd, and the same course stee
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd,
Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slav

XC.

The fool of false dominion—and a kind
Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould, (47)
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,
And an immortal instinct which redeem'd
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold,
Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd
At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beam'd,

XCI.

And came-and saw-and conquer'd! But the man Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, Like a train'd falcon, in the Gallic van,

Which he, in sooth, long led to victory,

With a deaf heart which never seem'd to be
A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
With but one weakest weakness-vanity,
Coquettish in ambition-still he aim'd-

At what? can he avouch-or answer what he claim'd?