A dome, its image, while the base expands Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in: ne'er The daring charge to raise it shall be given, His chisel bid the Hebrew, at whose word Lord Byron. Scenes that Evander bade his guest behold, Sleeps in her cradle. But in that drear waste, And eagles on its crest their aerie hung; And when fierce gales bowed the high pines, when blazed The lightning, and the savage in the storm Some unknown godhead heard, and, awe-struck, gazed On Jove's imagined form; And in that desert, when swoln Tiber's wave Went forth the twins to save, Their reedy cradle floating on his flood; While yet the infants on the she-wolf clung, The spirit of her blood, As o'er them seen to breathe With fond reverted neck she hung, And licked in turn each babe, and formed with foster ing tongue; And when the founder of imperial Rome Fixed on the robber hill, from earth aloof, His predatory home, And hung in triumph round his straw-thatched roof And towered in giant strength, and sent afar Stern preluding the war; And when the shepherds left their peaceful fold, Round their bold chieftain rushed strange forms of bar barous men, Then might be seen by the presageful eye And in the gloom of that remorseless time, The shadowy arm of one of giant birth Forging a chain for earth; And though slow ages rolled their course between, The form as of a Cæsar, when he led His war-worn legions on, Troubling the pastoral stream of peaceful Rubicon. Link a Faustina to an Antonine On their polluted temple, — who but thou, The prophet of the Lord! what word, save thine, Yet, ere that destined time, The love-lute and the viol, song and mirth, Ring from her palace roofs. Hear'st thou not yet, Metropolis of earth! A voice borne back on every passing wind, Wherever man has birth, One voice, as from the lip of human kind, The echo of thy fame? Flow they not yet, To commune with thy wrecks, and works sublime, Rome! thou art doomed to perish, and thy days, Like mortal man's, are numbered; numbered all, Ere each fleet hour decays. Though pride yet haunt thy palaces; though art Though thousands and ten thousands throng thy gate; Thy second reign shall pass,-pass like thy reign of yore. ROME. William Sotheby. I AM in Rome! Oft as the morning-ray Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry, Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me? And from within a thrilling voice replies, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts And I spring up as girt to run a race! Thou art in Rome! the city that so long |