LXXI

There his wild leaps quaint Fantoccini tries,
Chorused by laughter: here the crowd surrounds
The cowled monk, scoffing at life's vanities
To heedless ears and hearts; as louder sounds
His warning, lighter Punchinello bounds.
Zeal rears the crucifix! and, fear has knelt;
That magic spell the showman's art confounds.

LXI

Hark! from dark Nemi's plantain-woods, where, twining,
The tendrilled vine the branches clasps along,
Where glows through olives the bright cactus shining,
Echo the sounds of laughter and of song!
Lo, trooping forth, wild flowers their hair among,
Albano's dark-browed daughters, from their eyes
Joy flashing lightning, a Bacchante throng;

LI

But in that haunt, howe'er in thought secure,
The secret bias of the heart is known,
The pride or vanities that still endure;
Or the mind's first simplicity is shown,
Ere called to ripen rankly on a throne,
Passion and crime that else had been untaught;
So rises then the cell or hall of stone,
True emblem of the mind, its power thus brought

XLI

What were thy thoughts contemplating thy home,
The eternal city rearing her fair brow?
That thy all matchless eloquence saved Rome
From fire and sword, yea, from the razing plough
That cleaves the soil which hides her ruins now.
How much of life was crowded in thy span!
All that ambition's heart can hope below;

XXXI

Behold the Man of God, reclined apart
In solitary state, the human sun
That lighted chainless Israel to depart,
Guiding their pilgrim feet with toil foredone,
Through cloven waves and pathless deserts won,
Watched o'er by pillared fires; the seer alone
Who looked from Sinai's mount upon the One ;
There the great Hebrew prophet on his throne

XXI

Patriot, sage, poet, orator, each part
Was subtly played, the greatest unattained
In life and death unfelt, the hero's heart.
Dazzled wert thou, thy giddy summit gained,
While flattery whispered that the Tribune reigned;
Foes mocked thee, patriots saw their liberty
By crime, and vanity, and folly stained;
Failure, flight, cowardice, apostacy,

XI

Behold the lower circle! Glittering there
Patrician birth in serried ranks allied,
The Imperator fills his golden chair,
The man by adulation defied.
Above sits Roman beauty in her pride;
Crowning the topmost tier plebeians crowd,
Gazing as from the mountain's giant side
Into the vale; spread o'er them like a cloud,

PART III .

I

A RENA of the unrecorded brave!
Whose blood flowed unavenged upon thy sand;
Hold of the despot, refuge of the slave,
Den where the assassin made his latest stand;
Altar where hermits their devotion fanned;
Red scaffold where the unshaken martyr died;
Where sped the joust, where danced the motley band;

XCI

That the mocked symbols of a faith accursed
Should crown those altar-places desolate,
The fondest, latest by religion nursed?
When Truth should point her path to heaven, and fate
Become a word to raise the smile sedate,
When the gods multiform should bow to One?
Lo, there the victors on the vanquished wait;
The secrets of their creed revealed in stone,

LXXXI

Come sit with me upon this mossy stone,
And as the Forum's wreck we contemplate,
The hero's, sage's, seer's, and patriot's throne,
Rear thou the ruins in their ancient state!
Awake to life, thou canst, the good and great,
Until their shadows walk before our eyes;
Till Cato awes us with his mien sedate;
Till we behold the ardent Tully rise,