Part 30

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 its 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 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! 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.

O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst 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 arrayed Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was almighty hailed!

LXXXV.

Sylla was first of victors; but our own, The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he Too swept off senates while he hewed 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.

LXXXVI.

The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And showed 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 The austerest form of naked majesty, Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din, At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar 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 sucked from thy wild teat, Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, And thy limbs blacked with lightning--dost thou yet Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX.

Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead-- The men of iron; and the world hath reared Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled In imitation of the things they feared, And fought and conquered, and the same course steered, At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have neared, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,

XC.

The fool of false dominion--and a kind Of bastard Caesar, following him of old With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, And an immortal instinct which redeemed The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold. Alcides with the distaff now he seemed At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed.

XCI.

And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van, Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, With a deaf heart which never seemed to be A listener to itself, was strangely framed; With but one weakest weakness--vanity: Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?

XCII.

And would be all or nothing--nor could wait For the sure grave to level him; few years Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, On whom we tread: For THIS the conqueror rears The arch of triumph! and for this the tears And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, An universal deluge, which appears Without an ark for wretched man's abode, And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, God!

XCIII.

What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

XCIV.

And thus they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, Bequeathing their hereditary rage To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage War for their chains, and rather than be free, Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.

XCV.