The tomb of empire! Ruins! that efface
Whate'er, of finish'd, modern pomp can boast.
Snatch'd by these wonders to that world where

thought

Unfetter'd ranges, Fancy's magic hand
Led me anew o'er all the solemn scene,

Still in the mind's pure eye more solemn dress'd:
When straight, methought, the fair majestic Power
Of Liberty appear'd. Not, as of old,
Extended in her hand the cap, and rod,

Whose slave-enlarging touch gave double life:
But her bright temples bound with British oak,
And naval honours nodded on her brow.
Sublime of port: loose o'er her shoulder flow'd
Her sea-green robe, with constellations gay.
An island-goddess now; and her high care
The Queen of Isles, the mistress of the main.
My heart beat filial transport at the sight;
And, as she moved to speak, the awaken'd Muse
Listen'd intense. Awhile she look'd around,
With mournful eye the well known ruins mark'd,
And then, her sighs repressing, thus began:

"Mine are these wonders, all thou seest is mine; But ah, how changed! the falling poor remains Of what exalted once the Ausonian shore.

Behold her demigods, in senate met;
All head to counsel, and all heart to act:
The commonweal inspiring every tongue
With fervent eloquence, unbribed, and bold;
Ere tame Corruption taught the servile herd
To rank obedient to a master's voice.

"Her Forum see, warm, popular, and loud,
In trembling wonder hush'd, when the two Sires,*
As they the private father greatly quell'd,
Stood up the public fathers of the state.
See Justice judging there, in human shape.
Hark! how with freedom's voice it thunders high,
Or in soft murmurs sinks to Tully's tongue.

"Her tribes, her census, see; her generous

troops,

Whose pay was glory, and their best reward
Free for their country and for me to die;
Ere mercenary murder grew a trade.

"Mark, as the purple triumph waves along, The highest pomp and lowest fall of life.

"Her festive games, the school of heroes, see:
Her Circus, ardent with contending youth:
Her streets, her temples, palaces, and baths,
Full of fair forms, of Beauty's eldest born,
And of a people cast in virtue's mould:

Look back through time: and, rising from the While sculpture lives around, and Asian hills gloom,

Mark the dread scene, that paints whate'er I say.
"The great Republic see! that glow'd, sublime,
With the mix'd freedom of a thousand states;
Raised on the thrones of kings her curule chair,
And by her fasces awed the subject world.
See busy millions quickening all the land,
With cities throng'd, and teeming culture high:
For Nature then smiled on her free-born sons,
And pour'd the plenty that belongs to men.
Behold, the country cheering, villas rise,
In lively prospect; by the secret lapse

Lend their best stores to heave the pillar'd dome.
All that to Roman strength the softer touch
Of Grecian art can join. But language fails
To paint this sun, this centre of mankind;
Where every virtue, glory, treasure, art,
Attracted strong, in heighten'd lustre meet.

"Need I the contrast mark? unjoyous view!
A land in all, in government and arts,
In virtue, genius, earth, and heaven, reversed,
Who but these far famed ruins to behold,
Proofs of a people, whose heroic aims
Soar'd far above the little selfish sphere

Of brooks now lost, and streams renown'd in song; Of doubting modern life; who but inflamed
In Umbria's closing vales, or on the brow
Of her brown hills that breathe the scented gale:
On Baia's viny coast; where peaceful seas,
Fann'd by kind zephyrs, ever kiss the shore;
And suns unclouded shine, through purest air:
Or in the spacious neighbourhood of Rome;
Far shining upward to the Sabine hills,
To Anio's roar, and Tibur's olive shade;
To where Prenestè lifts her airy brow:
Or downward spreading to the sunny shore,
Where Alba breathes the freshness of the main.
"See distant mountains leave their valleys dry,
And o'er the proud Arcade their tribute pour,
To lave imperial Rome. For ages laid,
Deep, massy, firm, diverging every way,
With tombs of heroes sacred, see her roads;
By various nations trod, and suppliant kings;
With legions flaming, or with triumph gay.

With classic zeal, these consecrated scenes
Of men and deeds to trace; unhappy land,
Would trust thy wilds, and cities loose of sway?

"Are these the vales, that, once, exulting states
In their warm bosom fed? The mountains these.
On whose high-blooming sides my sons, of old,
I bred to glory? These dejected towns,
Where, mean and sordid, life can scarce subsist,
The scenes of ancient opulence and pomp?

"Full in the centre of these wondrous works, The pride of earth! Rome in her glory see!

"Come! by whatever sacred name disguised,
Oppression, come! and in thy works rejoice!
See nature's richest plains to putrid fens
Turn'd by thy fury. From their cheerful bounds,
See razed the enlivening village, farm, and seat.
First, rural toil, by thy rapacious hand

Robb'd of his poor reward, resign'd the plough,
And now he dares not turn the noxious glebe.
'Tis thine entire. The lonely swain himself,

⚫ Lucius Junius Brutus, and Virginius.

Who loves at large along the grassy downs
His flocks to pasture, thy drear champaign flies.
Far as the sickening eye can sweep around,
'Tis all one desert, desolate, and gray,
Grazed by the sullen buffalo alone;
And where the rank uncultivated growth
Of rotting ages taints the passing gale.
Beneath the baleful blast the city pines,
Or sinks enfeebled, or infected burns.
Beneath it mourns the solitary road,
Roll'd in rude mazes o'er the abandon'd waste;
While ancient ways, ingulf'd, are seen no more.
"Such thy dire plains, thou self-destroyer! foe
To human kind! thy mountains too, profuse,
Where savage nature blooms, seem their sad plaint
To raise against thy desolating rod.
There on the breezy brow, where thriving states
And famous cities, once, to the pleased sun,
Far other scenes of rising culture spread,
Pale shine thy ragged towns. Neglected round,
Each harvest pines; the livid, lean producé
Of heartless labour: while thy hated joys,
Not proper pleasure, lift the lazy hand.
Better to sink in sloth the woes of life,
Than wake their rage with unavailing toil.
Hence, drooping art almost to nature leaves
The rude unguided year. Thin wave the gifts
Of yellow Ceres, thin the radiant blush
Of orchard reddens in the warmest ray.
To weedy wildness run, no rural wealth
(Such as dictators fed) the garden pours.
Crude the wild olive flows, and foul the vine;
Nor juice Cæcubian, or Falernian, more,
Streams life and joy, save in the Muse's bowl.
Unseconded by art, the spinning race
Draw the bright thread in vain, and idly toil.
In vain, forlorn in wilds, the citron blows;
And flowering plants perfume the desert gale.
Through the vile thorn the tender myrtle twines:
Inglorious droops the laurel, dead to song,
And long a stranger to the hero's brow.

To the soft aid of cordial airs they fly,
Breathing a kind oblivion o'er their woes,
And love and music melt their souls away.
From feeble Justice, see how rash Revenge,
Trembling, the balance snatches; and the sword,
Fearful himself, to venal ruffians gives.
See where God's altar, nursing murder, stands,
With the red touch of dark assassins stain'd,

"But chief let Rome, the mighty city! speak
The full-exerted genius of thy reign.
Behold her rise amid the lifeless waste,
Expiring nature all corrupted round;
While the lone Tiber, through the desert plain,
Winds his waste stores, and sullen sweeps
along.

Patch'd from my fragments, in unsolid pomp,
Mark how the temple glares; and artful dress'd,
Amusive, draws the superstitious train.
Mark how the palace lifts a lying front,
Concealing often, in magnific jail,
Proud want; a deep unanimated gloom!
And oft adjoining to the drear abode
Of misery, whose melancholy walls
Seem its voracious grandeur to reproach.
Within the city bounds the desert see.
See the rank vine o'er subterranean roofs,
Indecent, spread; beneath whose fretted gold
It once, exulting, flow'd. The people mark,
Matchless, while fired by me; to public good
Inexorably firm, just, generous, brave,
Afraid of nothing but unworthy life,
Elate with glory, an heroic soul

Known to the vulgar breast: behold them now
A thin despairing number, all-subdued,
The slaves of slaves, by superstition fool'd,
By vice unmann'd and a licentious rule;
In guile ingenious, and in murder brave;
Such in one land, beneath the same fair clime,
Thy sons, Oppression, are; and such were mine.
"E'en with thy labour'd Pomp, for whose vain
show

"Nor half thy triumph this: cast, from brute Deluded thousands starve; all age-begrimed,

fields,

Into the haunts of men thy ruthless eye.
There buxom Plenty never turns her horn;
The grace and virtue of exterior life,
No clean convenience reigns; e'en sleep itself,
Least delicate of powers, reluctant, there,
Lays on the bed impure his heavy head.
Thy horrid walk! dead, empty, unadorn'd,
See streets whose echoes never know the voice
Of cheerful hurry, commerce many-tongued,
And art mechanic at his various task,
Fervent, employ'd. Mark the desponding race,
Of occupation void, as void of hope;
Hope, the glad ray, glanced from Eternal Good,
That life enlivens, and exalts its powers,
With views of fortune-madness all to them!
By thee relentless seized their better joys,

Torn, robb'd, and scatter'd in unnumber'd sacks,
And by the tempest of two thousand years
Continual shaken, let my ruins vie.
These roads that yet the Roman hand assert,
Beyond the weak repair of modern toil,
These fractured arches, that the chiding stream
No more delighted hear; these rich remains
Of marbles now unknown, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; these massy columns, hew'd
From Afric's farthest shore; one granite all,
These obelisks high-towering to the sky,
Mysterious mark'd with dark Egyptian lore;
These endless wonders that this sacred* way
Illumine still, and consecrate to fame;
These fountains, vases, urns, and statues, charged

• Via Sacra.

With the fine stores of art-completing Greece.
Mine is, besides, thy every later boast:
Thy Buonarotis, thy Palladios mine;

And wrapt in weeds the shore* of Venus lies.
There Baiæ sees no more the joyous throng;
Her bank all beaming with the pride of Rome;

And mine the fair designs, which Raphael's* soul No generous vines now bask along the hills,
O'er the live canvass, emanating, breathed.

"What would ye say, ye conquerors of earth!
Ye Romans, could you raise the laurel's head;
Could you the country see, by seas of blood,
And the dread toil of ages, won so dear;
Your pride, your triumph, your supreme delight!
For whose defence oft, in the doubtful hour,
You rush'd with rapture down the gulf of fate,
Of death ambitious! till by awful deeds,
Virtues, and courage, that amaze mankind,
The queen of nations rose; possess'd of all
Which nature, art, and glory could bestow:
What would you say, deep in the last abyss
Of slavery, vice, and unambitious want,

Thus to behold her sunk? your crowded plains,
Void of their cities; unadorn'd your hills;

Where sport the breezes of the Tyrrhene main:
With baths and temples mix'd, no villas rise;
Nor, art sustain'd amid reluctant waves,
Draw the cool murmurs of the breathing deep:
No spreading ports their sacred arms extend:
No mighty moles the big intrusive storm,
From the calm station, roll resounding back.
An almost total desolation sits,

A dreary stillness saddening o'er the coast;
Where,† when soft suns and tepid winters rose,
Rejoicing crowds inhaled the balm of peace;
Where citied hill to hill reflected blaze;
And where, with Ceres Bacchus wont to hold
A genial strife. Her youthful form, robust,
E'en Nature yields; by fire and earthquake rent:
Whole stately cities in the dark abrupt

Ungraced your lakes; your ports to ships un- Swallow'd at once, or vile in rubbish laid,

known;

Your lawless floods, and your abandon'd streams;
These could you know; these could you love
again?

Thy Tiber, Horace, could it now inspire,
Content, poetic ease, and rural joy,

A nest for serpents; from the red abyss
New hills, explosive, thrown; the Lucrine lake
A reedy pool: and all to Cuma's point,
The sea recovering his usurp'd domain,
And pour'd triumphant o'er the buried dome
'Hence Britain, learn; my best establish'd, last,

Soon bursting into song: while through the groves And more than Greece, or Rome, my steady reign;

Of headlong Anio, dashing to the vale,

In many a tortured stream, you mused along?
Yon wild retreat,† where superstition dreams,
Could, Tully, you your Tusculum believe?
And could you deem yon naked hills that form,
Famed in old song, the ship-forsaken bay,‡
Your Formian shore? Once the delight of earth,
Where art and nature, ever smiling, join'd
On the gay land to lavish all their stores.
How changed, how vacant, Virgil, wide around,
Would now your Naples seem? disaster'd less
By Black Vesuvius thundering o'er the coast
His midnight earthquakes, and his mining fires,
Than by despotic rage:§ that inward gnaws
A native foe; a foreign, tears without.
First from your flattered Cæsars this began:
Till, doomed to tyrants an eternal prey,
Thin peopled spreads, at last, the syren plain,||
That the dire soul of Hannibal disarm'd,

• Michael Angelo Buonaroti, Palladio, and Raphael d'Uromo; the three great modern masters in sculpture, architecrure, and painting.

↑ Tusculum is reckoned to have stood at a place now called Grotta Ferrata, a convent of monks.

The bay of Mola, (anciently Formie) into which Homer brings Ulysses and his companions. Near Formiæ Cicero had a villa.

Naples, then under the Austrian government. ■ Campagna Felice, adjoining to Capua.

The land where, King and People equal bound
By guardian laws, my fullest blessings flow;
And where my jealous unsubmitting soul,
The dread of tyrants! burns in every breast,
Learn hence, if such the miserable fate
Of an heroic race, the masters once
Of humankind; what, when deprived of ME,
How grievous must be thine? in spite of climes,
Whose sun-enlivened ether wakes the soul
To higher powers; in spite of happy soils,
That, but by labour's slightest aid impell❜d,
With treasures teem to thy cold clime unknown;
If there desponding fail the common arts,
And sustenance of life: could life itself,
Far less a thoughtless tyrant's hollow pomp,
Subsist with thee? against depressing skies,
Join'd to full spread oppression's cloudy brow,
How could thy spirits hold? where vigour find
Forced fruits to tear from their unnative soil?
Or, storing every harvest in thy ports,
To plough the dreadful all producing wave?'

Here paused the Goddess. By the cause assured,
In trembling accents thus I moved my prayer:

H

Led by their temper'd sires, on lawless men,
The last worst monsters of the shaggy wood,
Turn'd the keen arrow, and the sharpen'd spear.
Then war grew glorious. Heroes then arose;
Who, scorning coward self, for others lived,
Toil'd for their ease, and for their safety bled.
West, with the living day, to Greece I came :
Earth smiled beneath my beam: the Muse before
Sonorous flew, that low till then in woods

Had tuned the reed, and sigh'd the shepherd's
pain;

But now, to sing heroic deeds, she swell'd
A nobler note, and bade the banquet burn.
'For Greece my sons of Egypt I forsook;
A boastful race, that in the vain abyss
Of fabling ages loved to lose their source,
And with their river traced it from the skies.
While there my laws alone despotic reign'd,
And king, as well as people, proud obey'd;
I taught them science, virtue, wisdom, arts;
By poets, sages, legislators sought;

The school of polish'd life, and human kind.
But when mysterious Superstition came,
And, with her Civil Sister* leagued, involved
In studied darkness the desponding mind;

Conspired to blow the flower of human kind,
And lavish'd all that genius can inspire.
Clear, sunny climates, by the breezy main,
Ionian or Egean, temper'd kind:

Light, airy soils: a country rich, and gay
Broke into hills with balmy odours crown'd,
And, bright with purple harvest, joyous vales:
Mountains, and streams, where verse spontaneous
flow'd;

Whence deem'd by wondering men the seat of
gods,

And still the mountains and the streams of song.
All that boon Nature could luxuriant pour
Of high materials, and my restless Arts
Frame into finish'd life. How many states,
And clustering towns, and monuments of fame,
And scenes of glorious deeds, in little bounds?
From the rough tract of bending mountains, bea
By Adria's here, there by Ægean waves;
To where the deep adorning Cyclade Isles
In shining prospect rise, and on the shore
Of farthest Crete resounds the Libyan main.
'O'er all two rival cities rear'd the brow,
And balanced all. Spread on Eurotas' bank,
Amid a circle of soft rising hills,

Then Tyrant Power the righteous scourge un- The patient Sparta one: the sober, hard,

loosed:

For yielded reason speaks the soul a slave.
Instead of useful works, like nature's, great,
Enormous, cruel wonders crush'd the land;
And round a tyrant's tomb,† who none deserved,
For one vile carcass perish'd countless lives.
Then the great Dragon,‡ couch'd amid his floods,
Swell'd his fierce heart, and cried, "This flood is
mine,

'Tis I that bid it flow." But, undeceived,
His frenzy soon the proud blasphemer felt;
Felt that, without my fertilizing power,
Suns lost their force, and Niles o'erflow'd in vain.
Nought could retard me: nor the frugal state
Of rising Persia, sober in extreme,
Beyond the pitch of man, and thence reversed
Into luxurious waste: nor yet the ports
Of old Phoenicia; first for letters famed,
That paint the voice, and silent speak to sight;
Of arts prime source, and guardian! by fair stars,
First tempted out into the lonely deep;
To whom I first disclosed mechanic arts,
The winds to conquer, to subdue the waves,
With all the peaceful power of ruling trade;
Earnest of Britain. Nor by these retain'd;
Nor by the neighbouring land, whose palmy shore
The silver Jordan laves. Before me lay
The promised Land of Arts, and urged my flight.
'Hail, Nature's utmost boast! unrival'd Greece!
My fairest reign! where every power benign

↑ The Pyramids. The Tyrants of Egypt.

Civil Tyranny.

And man-subduing city; which no shape
Of pain could conquer, nor of pleasure charm.
Lycurgus there built, on the solid base
Of equal life, so well a temper'd state;
Where mix'd each government, in such just poise;
Each power so checking, and supporting each;
That firm for ages, and unmoved, it stood,
| The fort of Greece! without one giddy hour,
One shock of faction, or of party rage.

For, drain'd the springs of wealth, Corruption
there

Lay wither'd at the root. Thrice happy land!
Had not neglected art, with weedy vice
Confounded, sunk. But if Athenian arts
Loved not the soil; yet there the calm abode
Of wisdom, virtue, philosophic ease,
Of manly sense and wit, in frugal phrase
Confined, and press'd into Laconic force.
There too, by rooting thence still treacherous self,
The Public and the Private grew the same.
The children of the nursing Public all,
And at its table fed; for that they toil'd,
For that they lived entire, and even for that
The tender mother urged her son to die.

'Of softer genius, but not less intent
To seize the palm of empire, Athens rose.
Where, with bright marbles big and future pomp,
Hymettus* spread, amid the scented sky,
His thymy treasures to the labouring bee,
And to botanic hand the stores of health:
Wrapt in a soul-attenuating clime,

A mountain near Athens