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It is not that I may not have incurr'd
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound
I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr'd
With a just weapon, it had flow'd unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the
ground;

To thee I do devote it-thou shalt take The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,

Which if I have not taken for the sakeBut let that pass-I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that

now

I shrink from what is suffer'd : let him speak Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; But in this page a record will I seek. Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

That curse shall be Forgiveness.—Have I

not

Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!

Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffer'd things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven,

Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?

And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few,
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus-glance of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would seem

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The seal is set.-Now welcome, thou dread power!

Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight-hour With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;

Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls

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I 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 hail'd
the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far
away;

He reck'd 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 their Dacian mother-he, their

sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-
All this rush'd with his blood-Shall he
expire

And unavenged?-Arise! ye Goths, and
glut your ire!

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;

And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,

stream

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise

Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much—and fall the stars' faint rays

Heroes have trod this spot—'tis on their Then in this magic circle raise the dead: dust ye tread.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

"When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; "And when Rome falls-the World." From Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty our own land wall

In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are
still

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
On their foundations, and unalter'd all;
The World, the same wide den—of thieves,
or what ye will.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime—
From Jove to Jesus-spared and blest by
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
time;
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and
His way through thorns to ashes-glorious
man plods
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and
dome!
tyrants' rods

And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain-Shiver upon thee-sanctuary and home
Of art and piety-Pantheon!-pride of Rome!
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
A holiness appealing to all hearts—
Despoil'd yet perfect, with thy circle spreads
To art a model; and to him who treads
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
And they who feel for genius may repose
Who worship,here are altars for their beads;
Their eyes on honour'd forms, whose busts
around them close.

On the arena void-seats crush'd-walls

bow'd

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes
strangely loud.

A rain-yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass
And marvel where the spoil could have
appear'd.

Hath it indeed been plunder'd,or but clear'd?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man,
have reft away.

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There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
Two forms are slowly shadow'd on my
What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!
sight-

Two insulated phantoms of the brain :
An old man, and a female young and fair,
It is not so; I see them full and plain—
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:-but what doth she
there,

With her unmantled neck, and bosom white
and bare?

young

Full swells the deep pare fountain of y
Where on the heart and from the heart we
life,
took

Our first and sweetest nurture, when the
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
wife,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook

No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,
Man knows not, when from out its cradled Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all

nook

She sees her little bud put forth its leaves-
What may the fruits be yet?—I know not-
Cain was Eve's.

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But lo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana's marvel was a cell-
Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's
tomb;

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle—
Its columns strew the wilderness; and dwell
The hyaena and the jackall in their shade:
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell
Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have
survey'd

Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem
pray'd;

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone with nothing like to thee
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,

are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.
Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
brow.
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his

advance,
Thou movest but increasing with the
Like climbing some great Alp, which still
doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
Vastness which grows-but grows to har-
monize

All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles-richer painting - shrines

where flame
which vies
The lamps of gold-and haughty dome

their frame In air with Earth's chief structures, though

Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clouds must claim.

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Not by its fault-but thine: Our outward

sense

Is but of gradual grasp and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,
Till,growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they con-
template.

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased,or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought
could plan;

The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture-dignifying pain-
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending:-
Vain

The struggle; vain,against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,

The old man's clench; the long envenom'd

chain

Rivets the living links,-the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on

gasp.

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all

That we inherit in its mortal shroud,
And spreads the dim and universal pall
Through which all things grow phantoms;
and the cloud
Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd,
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allow'd
To hover on the verge of darkness; rays
Sadder than saddest night, for they dis-
tract the gaze,

And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear,—but never more,
Oh, happier thought! can we be made

the same;

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light-It is enough in sooth that once we bore
The Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow These fardels of the heart-the heart whose
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
sweat was gore.
The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow

bright

With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might, And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity.

But in his delicate form-a dream of Love, Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast

Long'd for a deathless lover from above,
And madden'd in that vision are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever bless'd
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly
guest-

A ray of immortality-and stood,
Starlike,around, until they gather'd to a god!

And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble hath array'd
With an eternal glory-which, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought;
And time himself hath hallow'd it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust-nor hath it caught
A tinge af years, but breathes the flame
with which 'twas wrought.

But where is he; the Pilgrim of my song, The being who upheld it through the past? Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. He is no more these breathings are his last; His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, And he himself as nothing:-if he was Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd With forms which live and suffer let that

pass

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;
Through storm and darkness yawns the
rending ground,

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd,

And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

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His shadow fades away into Destruction's The husband of a year! the father of the

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Of sackcloth was thy wedding-garment made; Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid, The love of millions! How we did entrust Futurity to her! and, though it must Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd Our children should obey her child,and bless'd Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd

Like stars to shepherds' eyes:-'twas but a meteor beam'd.

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well: The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate

Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung

Against their blind omnipotence a weight Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,

These might have been her destiny; but no, Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, Good without effort, great without a foe; But now a bride and mother—and now there! How many ties did that stern moment tear! From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast

Is link'd the electric chain of that despair, Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest

The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation,and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And, calm as cherish'd hate,its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps
the snake.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister-valley ;-and afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
“ Arms and the Man,” whose reascending star
Rose o'er an empire :- but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome; and where
yon bar

Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight.

But I forget. My pilgrim's shrine is won, And he and I must part, so let it be,His task and mine alike are nearly done; Yet once more let us look upon the sea;

The midland ocean breaks on him and me, And from the Alban Mount we now behold Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years— Long, though not very many, since have done Their work on both; some suffering and

some tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
We have had our reward-and it is here;
That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun,
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man to trouble what
is clear.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements!-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely
be our lot.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet can not all
conceal.

Roll on,thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed,nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and

unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful

spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth:—there let him lay.

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