LXI

Peace! from yon altar's depths a sound is stealing,
Impalpable as dreams, or touch of light
Upon the brow of darkness felt, revealing
Its soundless presence in airial flight,
Vibrating on the dull dead ear of Night;
An exhalation rising from beneath
To blend its being with the infinite;
A spirit-tone that glides on its own breath,
While gently wakening silence from the sleep of death.

LXII

A stillness, death-like all, the judgment doom,
Felt coming, yet withheld; then stole on air
Notes faintly flowing forth as from a tomb;
The breathing of a soul's imploring prayer;
Sighs of eternal farewells, the despair
Of ties for ever rent, the grief profound
As if of Angels interceding there;
Then, rising from that surging sea of sound,
The Miserere's hymn, that told of pardon found.

LXIII

What Temple frowns before us in our path,
As if our step advancing it controlled?
I know thee, awful shrine! on whom the wrath
Of twenty ages with their storms have rolled.
Pantheon! who unmoved can thee behold?
Thou that recall'st Rome's hero-origin,
Thus unadorned cast forth from Nature's mould;
The heroic age when freedom brought forth men,
Oh, yet shall time recall that golden life again!

LXIV

Virtues stern impress we behold, though faded,
Austerely stamped upon thy naked brow!
The acanthus' leaves are rent away that braided,
But never awed thy majesty as now,
While hallowing time doth eloquently show
Thy wrongs, till, dwelling on thee, the staid mind
Feels thy resistance that to nought shall bow,
On thy self-strength immovably reclined;
To fortune, change, or wreck impassively resigned.

LXV

The mellowed image of the beautiful,
Darkened by years, that storms nor fires efface,
Sits on thy front, and doth the mind o'errule,
For the imagination cannot trace,
Save here, where strength, and majesty, and grace,
The triad, meet; the old heroic time
Lives in thee, ages slumber round thy base;
Amid the barbarous toys of modern clime,
Thou stand'st from all apart, stern, simple, and sublime.

LXVI

We stand upon the Capitol, the heart
Of magisterial Rome, that fiercer beat
While danger pointed there his deadliest dart,
When the Gaul fired her city at her feet;
Then when enthroned upon that rocky seat,
With an unconquered energy, she hurled
Headlong the wretch who dared her last retreat;
The freeman's hand her eagles' wings unfurled,
The patriot virtue hers that awed the subject world.

LXVII

Here the mind's eye concentrates its full gaze;
Throne from whence fulmined Rome her levelled wrath;
Star-crowning point of fame and fortune's rays;
The eagle's nest that sent on their fierce path
Conquerors, who held their conquests nothing worth
Till up that haughty steep again they rode,
Offering the mighty mother of their birth
The spoils from nations crushed; the glittering load
Of crowns from monarchs plucked who chained behind them trode.

LXVIII

The majesty of Rome, the coronal
Twined round the victor's forehead fortune weaves,
The envied and the gazed upon by all,
Kings in their pageant sunk to crownless slaves,
That trod above their Mamertinean graves,
Walking in life o'er caverned death beneath;
The intoxicating sense that memory leaves
Of worth and power, the laurel's withering wreath,
The fame that lives and dies in other's transient breath; —

LXIX

Such are the lures that have been, and shall be,
Till peace be held as the diviner name,
The earth one dwelling-place of liberty;
Then truth shall point the only path to fame,
The mightiest wreath aspiring man should claim,
Unfading where all else shall fade, and pure
As from the altar soars the heavenward flame;
Those crowning words or deeds that best secure
The happiness of men, sole records that endure.

LXX

She-wolf, thou fitting savage nurse of Rome!
Akin was thy wild nature; thy fierce spring
Deadly as hers excited in the foam
Of her roused wrath that knew no softening.
There, the contending twins beneath thee cling
For milk that gall-like from their hearts flowed o'er,
Until their walls, war's Cain-like offering,
From their first rising smoke of incense, bore
A curse upon them, dyed with fratricidal gore.