XLI

Time, the dread secrets of the past avow!
Death, raise thy yawning portal gates to tell
What is their doom, or where the actors now?
Fed they the worm alike, the weak who fell,
The strong who triumphed, those who ill or well
Played on the stage, feared, hated, or caressed?
Ye mightier dead! whose spirits in us dwell,
Our life-inspirers, have ye joined the rest,
Sage, bard, barbarian, slave, by the same fate oppressed?

XLII

Avenging Nemesis! dread power, that weighest
The dust of nations, thou art not a shade,
Thou on this spot thy iron sceptre swayest;
Thy throne is here by desolation made;
More awful thus with solitude arrayed,
Than visibly apparent; thou hast passed,
Lo, how thy Shadow on the ground hath laid!
A blighting spell, a withering curse, o'ercast
By lightnings of thy presence — such the power thou hast.

XLIII

And thou dost rise o'er this, eternal Rome!
Dream of our youth, whose hope will not depart
Until we die or see thy sacred home;
Altar of pilgrimage to every heart
Whose feeling is religion; thou, that art
Nurse of our faith, arts, arms; to whom were given
The keys of heaven, and hell's avenging dart.
Kings at thy feet have knelt to be forgiven,
Thou that durst mediate with fallen man and heaven.

XLIV

I leaned against a grey and mouldering stone,
Last wreck of Troy-like Veii; the bird
Nestled above its crest with flowers o'ergrown;
Inward tradition's cloudy voice I heard;
I thought of when the twin-born cities stirred,
Contending in Time's womb for earliest birth,
While Fate had stamped the irrevocable word;
Death-doomed the one; the other ruling earth,
To prove the moral drawn from fame and fortune's worth.

XLV

But where is Rome, that matron on the ground,
O'er her stern brow oblivion's ashes shed?
Where she who sate upon her seven hills crowned,
Still raising haughtily her regal head,
The majesty of ruin round her spread?
Where sits that Queen who time and fate defied,
Bidding kings kneel before her glories fled?
Lo, yon far shrine! she hath but changed her pride,
Aspiring heavenward still for crowns by earth denied.

XLVI

Fallen is thy power, yet just was the decree;
Nations awaked rebelled from thy false sway,
Men gave to God their homage, not to thee,
Spurning thy threats, and idols vain as they.
States pass, religions flourish and decay,
But lives the undecaying realm of Art;
Here rul'st thou man with beauty, with the ray
Of the divinity, ourselves a part
Of the undying life whose altar is the heart.

XLVII

And dim beside her rises Hadrian's tomb,
And the blue Sabine hills; 'tis Rome! Awake
The glorious memories that her brow illume,
Now, while the light of ages o'er it break;
Pause! on this sacred spot couldst thou partake
Feeling of triumph? Vain were such false heat,
The ashes of the dead beneath thee rake;
The dust of ages quickens at thy feet;
The Past is watching here from her time-hallowed seat.

XLVIII

Spirits of forty ages, answer me!
Ye hover round this spot impalpable,
But felt in your all-sightless agency;
I appeal to ye as an Oracle:
Answer my invocation! — dare to tell
Who wrought this ruin? who aroused at last
Avenging Nemesis, that fate-like fell
Yourselves to crush? your power who overcast
In dust, to teach once more the present by the past?

XLIX

Who saw, and felt, but spurned, the lesson taught
By fall of buried empires? for an hour
Of petty sway, who heaped the shrine, o'erfraught
With human victims to the Moloch power?
Who made corruption, slavery, vice, the dower
Of the gorged herd, still gorging unsufficed,
Till ruling Sybarites they taught to cower,
While they the bauble crown in barter prized,
Thrown to the wealthier wretch whom even they despised?

L

'Twas you; your love of power insatiate
Brute ignorance fed, till, rising, she o'erthrew
Her clay-reared idol; when behind your gate
Fear, cowering, looked on the barbarian crew,
When more than foemen, fire, plague, famine slew,
Who lowered your supple natures till you were
So worm-like trampled on, prostration grew
Your natural homage, the slave's soulless air,
The flattery wrung from dread, the infamous despair!