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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 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.

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 Socrate'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 woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

14

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?

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 66 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 Virgils' 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 of 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.

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