The dictatorial wreath 53-couldst thou divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named Eternal, and array'd Her warriors but to conquer-she who veil'd Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd, Until the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd,
Her rushing wings-Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd!
Sylla was first of victors; but our own,
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!-he
Too swept off senates while he hew'd the throne
Down to a block-immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
And famous through all ages! but beneath His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.54
The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crown'd him, on the selfsame day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And show'd not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and consume Our souls to compass through each arduous way, Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom!
And thou, dread statue! yet existent in 55 The austerest form of naked majesty, Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din, At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie, Folding his robe in dying dignity,
An offering to thine altar from the queen Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome ! 56 She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart The milk of conquest yet within the dome Where, as a monument of antique art, Thou standest:-Mother of the mighty heart, Which the great founder suck'd from thy wild teat, Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning-dost thou yet Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
Thou dost; but all thy foster-babes are dead— The men of iron; and the world hath rear'd
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they fear'd,
And fought and conquer'd, and the same course steer'd, At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave
At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd, Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave
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