PART III .

I

A RENA of the unrecorded brave!
Whose blood flowed unavenged upon thy sand;
Hold of the despot, refuge of the slave,
Den where the assassin made his latest stand;
Altar where hermits their devotion fanned;
Red scaffold where the unshaken martyr died;
Where sped the joust, where danced the motley band;
Stage ever changing! still the pilgrim's guide
From earth's remotest shores, who here have smiled or sighed,

II

Pouring the thought or passion of the hour,
Great Colosseum! at thy mighty shrine.
Earth's bosom cumbered with the wrecks of power,
Shows nought beneath the sky to match with thine;
Earthquakes have heaved, storms rent, time worn each line
Of thy majestic fabric; but the eye
Of fancy, nothing grander can combine
Than thy sublime but shattered symmetry,
Thou wonder, pride, and awe of all that pass thee by

III

Hark! — the night's slumberous air is musical
With the low carolling of birds, that seem
To hold here an enduring festival;
How do their notes and nature's flowers redeem
The place from old pollution! If the stream
Of reeking blood gushed forth from man and beast,
If Cain-like brethren gloated o'er the steam
Of immolation as a welcome feast,
Ages have cleansed the guilt, the unnatural strife hath ceased.

IV

Gentle their sentence! If they blindly thought,
The offspring-deed betrayed its heathen source,
They practised but the lessons they were taught;
Their creed was wrong, and lust, and lawless force —
Their gods were tyrants, fierce, with less remorse
Than man when most embruted: such were given
By superstition as her last resource,
To solder chains by time and freedom riven,
Pandering to grosser sense, embodying vice in heaven.

V

What thought, what hope, had they beyond the hour?
Wealth sapped their feebler virtue to its roots,
While their heart's rankest weeds were fed by power,
Crushing in blossom those majestic shoots
That ask for culture ere they yield their fruits,
That crown the man as with a coronal.
Pause ere thy blame thy conscious heart confutes;
Thy own felt weakness o'er their dust recall:
To err is human still, the common lot of all.

VI

The white flowers blossom, chapleting a ground
Whose dust was human; they bloom not the less;
Where be the myriads once those seats that crowned?
They gazed on thee, bright Moon! but did not bless
Thine urn, from which they drank no gentleness.
The fight, the hunt, the galley's crashing prow,
Such were their morning hopes of happiness,
For which they waited with as feverish brow
As for some worthless aim our hearts are beating now.

VII

Then rest forgiveness on their memory;
Life's infancy was theirs, its solemn end
Unknown; they felt not their humanity,
They knew not their vast souls. Lo! how ascend
Tier above tier those benches that extend
In shattered circles, where the Roman sate,
While on his nod, or voice, or finger's bend,
The gladiator read remorseless fate:
Even so night life or death on one slight motion wait!

VIII

Along its broken edges, on a sky
Of azure, sharply, delicately traced,
The light bird flits o'er flowers that wave from high,
Where human foot shall never more be based.
Grass mantles the arena, mid defaced
And broken columns, freshly, wildly spread,
And through those hollow windows once so graced
With glittering eyes, faint stars their twinklings shed,
Lighting as if with life those sockets of the dead!

IX

So stretches that Titanic skeleton,
Its shattered and enormous circle rent,
And yawning open, arch and covering gone.
As the huge crater's sides hang imminent
Round the volcano whose last flames are spent,
Whose sounds shall never more to heaven aspire,
So frowns that stern and desolate Monument;
A stage in ruin, an exhausted pyre,
The actors passed to dust, for ever quenched its fire!

X

Hark! — the deep hush of men, the stifled hum,
As when for moments armies hold their breath
Suspended ere the signal-word become
Fate's utterance, the award of life or death;
In the thronged seats around, above, beneath,
A sea of heads, a coil of human life
Circles as with a vast and varied wreath,
Each stone and living column; each door rife
With struggle, stand, or rush, the moment's jostling strife.