XI

Behold the lower circle! Glittering there
Patrician birth in serried ranks allied,
The Imperator fills his golden chair,
The man by adulation defied.
Above sits Roman beauty in her pride;
Crowning the topmost tier plebeians crowd,
Gazing as from the mountain's giant side
Into the vale; spread o'er them like a cloud,
Glows through its purple folds the outspread Velaria's shroud.

XII

The roar is hushed, a deathlike stillness reigns;
A sight unused hath caused that lull profound;
Satiate with blood, their thirst awhile refrains;
O'er breathless myriads ye might hear the sound
Of the wind floating on the sail unwound.
Lo, where the vanquished sinks! in him is shown.
The heroic mould; around his neck is bound,
Stamping the slave, the brazen collar thrown;
In those shagged locks and beard the race barbarian known.

XIII

Fainting he reels, blood gushingly hath broke
From the death-wound, slow oozing down his side;
He falls as in his country's woods the oak
That cleft and thunder-rent the storm defied;
In his bold brow ye trace the freeman's pride,
Flashed from those eyes the heart that could not yield;
Hero by nature stamped, by fate denied;
The haughtiest scorn on his curled lip revealed
His loathing of the crowd, wild hate no more concealed.

XIV

For he is feeling the approach of death,
The chill, the fainting sickness, but his mind
Is busy while thick heaves his gasping breath;
Alas! no eye shall bend o'er him reclined;
No pious hand shall dig his grave, nor wind
His wreath, and consecrate with tears each flower;
Hurled to the dogs his body who shall find?
The pageant, sport, and ruffian of the hour,
Dragged from his far-off clime, enslaved to brutal power.

XV

Space whirls around him, 'tis not the crowd's roar
He hears; the blood from his laxed arteries.
Sounds ebbing like the spent waves on the shore;
From the red sands beneath he sees arise
Trees, grassy fields, loved forms, and speaking eyes,
And kinsmen's beckoning hands, he lifts his head;
A flashing light; home's far realities
Buried in thunder-clouds sink darkened, fled,
His quivering limbs convulse, life passes — he is dead.

XVI

And there the Moon sleeps, flooding that white ground,
Paling with ghastly sheen each column's height;
While the gigantic circle yawns around,
Drear, silent, savage; on which, twinkling bright,
Shine the keen stars; and, like an anchorite
In his cowl shrouded heaven frowns blackly o'er;
Yet wouldst thou see that pile in beauty's light,
Watch it not silvered by grey moonlight o'er,
Go, when departing day adds there one glory more; —

XVII

For with that ruin and the dying day
Are blended sympathies that man may feel;
The red light magnifies its grand decay,
Hallowing the wounds which time would not conceal;
Tints that are harmonies then round it steal;
Hues which are nature's feelings for the past.
Doth she not ever such with time reveal?
And o'er the wreck her nameless magic cast,
Religion of the place that shall grey faiths outlast.

XVIII

And the rich paradise of flowers unfaded,
That from the mossy grasses blushing glow,
With the last tints and hues of evening braided;
The o'ercresting weeds and ivy-wreaths that grow
Fantastically round each arch's brow,
Filling each wreck with motion; the birds' song
Making a festival above, below;
O, when red twilight fades those walls along,
Payest thou not homage there, thou dost that ruin wrong!

XIX

We stand before the dwelling of a man
Who proved, ere meteor-like his spirit fled,
Through Rome's live heart the blood of freedom ran;
That, with the dust of ages o'er her spread,
Prostrate and chained, the Helot was not dead.
A resurrection of futurity
Awaiting still, to raise her buried head;
Cola Rienzi! was reserved for thee,
To infuse within her veins the life of liberty.

XX

Here like a fallen Angel, 'mid the wreck
Of a crushed world thou stood'st, evoking forth
Passionate words that waited at thy beck
To raise the fiends, hate, vengeance, into birth,
And the old memories of heroic worth.
The skeleton fragments of Rome's giant power
Recalled the minds that once o'erruled the earth;
Freedom awoke; the spirit that made cower
Tyrants, called up again the Nemesis of the hour.