Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns Hope to dust, the dust we all have

trod.

CXXVI

Our life is a false nature, 't is not in
The harmony of things, this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,

This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be

The skies which rain their plagues on men like dewDisease, death, bondage — all the woes we see

And worse, the woes we see not—which throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII

Yet let us ponder boldly; 't is a base
Abandonment of reason to resign

Our right of thought, our last and only place

Of refuge this, at least, shall still be mine.

Though from our birth the faculty divine

Is chain'd and tortured-cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,

The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.

Vatican Gallery at Rome.

"Turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain —
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending."

- Childe Harold, Canto IV, stanza clx, p. 104.

CXXVIII

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine As 't were its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long-explored but still exhaustless mine Of contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

CXXIX

Hues which have words and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruin'd battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp and wait till ages are its dower.

CXXXIX

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmur'd pity or loud-roar'd applause,
As man was slaughter'd by his fellow man.

And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because

Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. — Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms-on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

CXL

I see before me the Gladiator lie :

He leans upon his hand his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his droop'd head sinks gradually low-
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
he is gone,

The arena swims around him

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who

won.

CXLI

He heard it, but he heeded not his eyes
Were with his heart and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-

All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he expire And unavenged?-Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!