THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONE

R

Another despot of the kind!

Such claims as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade -
I see their glorious black eyes shine:
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Samian's marbled steep-

Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swanlike, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine.

THE DYING GLADIATOR.

THE seal is set. Now welcome, thou dread power!

Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour, With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear; Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all seeing but unseen.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran

In murmured pity, or loud roared applause,

As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.

And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,

And the imperial pleasure. Wherefore not? What matter where we fall to fill the maws

Of worms

on battle plains or listed spot?

Both are but theaters where the chief actors rot.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:

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

And his drooped 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 thundershower; and now
- he is gone

The arena swims around him

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who

his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked 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,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday:

-

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

TO ROME.

O ROME, my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and empires, ye
Whose agonies are evils of a day!

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! There she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

An empty urn within her withered hands,

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago: The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchers lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress! The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride;

She saw her glories star by star expire,

And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site.
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say,

"Here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err:

The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap: But Rome is as the desert, where we steer

Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap Our hands, and cry, "Eureka! it is clear When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas, the lofty city! and alas,

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page! but these shall be
Her resurrection: all beside, decay.

Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

VENICE.

(From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.")

I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: