When agony of pleasure chained each sense,
In willing horror bound;
While swarm o'er swarm the gathering nations hung,
And where round circles widening circles spread,
And arch outsoaring arch
Bathed in the sunbeams its ambitious head,
Watched, as the dying Gladiator leant
On his sustaining arm, and o'er the wound,
Whence the large life-drops struggled, coolly bent,
And calmly looked on earth,
As one who gradual sinks in still repose,
His eye in death to close
On the familiar spot that viewed his blissful birth.
Unlike the actor on a theatre,
Who feigns the wound unfelt, that Roman died:
He too an actor; and when death drew nigh,
By Rome's tremendous silence glorified,
Firmly sustained his part.
No sound, no gesture, e'er to ear or eye
Betrayed the sufferance of the pang severe,
The hand that grasped his heart;
Save the low pant that marked his lessening breath,
And one last deep-drawn groan-the agony of death.
Shout then, and bursting rapture, and the roar
Of myriads-then commingling life-streams ran,
And Rome, inebriate, drank the blood of man,
And swelled the human hecatomb with gore
Of birds and beasts, and monsters of the main;
While Death piled up the pyre-the slayers on the
slain.-
All, all are swept away,
Who made the world a gazing theatre,
The arena, thundering to their war career,
But thou, enduring monument!
Though thy Cyclopean stones in Rome's dark hour
Built up her fort and tower,
And palaces, whose gloomy grandeur vast
O'er her proud temples darkness cast;
Though all-destructive Time
Has bowed thy crest sublime,
And storms that crushed the rocks thy glory rent;
Though the unsparing earthquake, in its ire
That shook the pillars of the globe below,
Has rocked thee to and fro,
Shattering thy mountain base;
Yet thou, amidst the wrecks of human pride,
Hast heaven and earth defied-
The flame-winged bolt, and War's insatiate sword;
And viewed around thee perish, race on race.
The Goth, the Hun, the Norman, horde on horde,
Vanish without a trace;
All, all who envied Rome in fame,
The echo of her name;
While ages rolled on ages, circling by,
Graved on thy forehead,—" Rome's eternity."
THE COLISEUM, BY MOONLIGHT.
RCHES on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches: for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe,-there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.
SEE before me the Gladiator lie;
He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low-
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him—he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who
He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay;
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was the Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday-
All this rushed with his blood-shall he expire
And unavenged?—Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!
HE shroud of years thrown back, thou dost revive,
Half-raised, half-buried,—dead, yet still alive!
Gathering the world around thee, to admire
Thy disinterment, and with hearts on fire,
To catch the form and fashion of the time
When Pliny lived and thou wert in thy prime;
So strange thy resurrection, it may seem
Less waking life than a distressful dream.
Hushed is this once gay scene, nor murmur more
The city's din, the crowd's tumultuous roar,
The laugh convivial, and the chiming sound
Of golden goblets with Falernian crowned;
The mellow breathings of the Lydian flute,
And the sweet drip of fountains, as they shoot
From marble basements,-these, all these are mute!
Closed are her springs, unnumbered fathoms deep,
Her splendid domes are one dismantled heap;
Her temples soiled, her statues in the dust,
Her tarnished medals long devoured by rust;
Its rainbow pavements broken from the bath,
The once-thronged Forum-an untrodden path;
The fanes of love-forgotten cells; the shrines
Of vaunted gods-inurned in sulphur mines;
The abodes of art, of luxury, and taste-
Tombs of their once glad residents—a waste,
O'er which compassionate years have gradual thrown
The trailing vine, and bid the myrtle moan.
And in the track of him who went to die,*
Traverse this valley of waters, landing where
A waking dream awaits us. At a step
Two thousand years roll backward, and we stand,
Like those so long within that awful Place,
Immovable, nor asking, Can it be?
Once did I linger there alone, till day
Closed, and at length the calm of twilight came,
So grateful, yet so solemn! At the fount,
Just where the three ways meet, I stood and looked,
('Twas near a noble house, the house of Pansa)
And all was still as in the long, long night
That followed, when the shower of ashes fell;
When they that sought Pompeii, sought in vain;
It was not to be found. But now a ray,
Bright and yet brighter, on the pavement glanced.
And on the wheel-track worn for centuries,
And on the stepping-stones from side to side,
O'er which the maidens, with their water urns,
Were wont to trip so lightly. Full and clear,
The moon was rising, and at once revealed
The name of every dweller, and his craft;
Shining throughout with an unusual lustre,
And lighting up this City of the Dead.-
Mark, where within, as though the embers lived,
The ample chimney-vault is dun with smoke,
There dwelt a miller. Silent and at rest
His mill-stones now. In old companionship
Still do they stand as on the day he went,
Each ready for its office-but he comes not.
And here, hard by (where one in idleness
Has stopt to scrawl a ship and an armed man;
And in a tablet on the wall we read
Of shows ere long to be) a sculptor wrought,
Nor meanly; blocks, half chiselled into life,
Waiting his call. Here long, as yet attests
The trodden floor, an olive-merchant drew
From many an earthen jar, no more supplied;
And here from his a vintner served his guests
Largely, the stain of his o'erflowing cups
Fresh on the marble. On the bench beneath
They sate and quaffed and looked on them that passed,
Gravely discussing the last news from Rome.
But, lo, engraven on a threshold-stone,
That word of courtesy, so sacred once,
|