A

THE COLISEUM.

ND 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 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.

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 thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not: 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!

But here, where murder breathed her bloody steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;

Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much, — and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void, seats crushed, walls bowed, And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

A ruin, yet what ruin! from its mass

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared:

It will not bear the brightness of the day, Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft

away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air,
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;

When the light shines serene, but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead:

Heroes have trod this spot, 't is on their dust ye tread.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls the World." From our own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,

The world the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye will.

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

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 ruined battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

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

Lord Byron.

THE COLISEUM.

I

DO remember me, that in my youth,

When I was wandering, — upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,

Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsar's palace came
The owl's long cry, and interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot. Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;
But the gladiators' bloody circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!
While Caesar's chambers and the Augustan halls
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,

As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

Lord Byron.

A

THE COLISEUM.

RENA of the unrewarded brave!

Whose blood flowed unavenged upon thy sand; Hold of the despot, refuge of the slave,

Den where the assassin made his latest stand:
Altar where hermits their devotion fanned,
Red scaffold where the unshaken martyr died;

Where sped the joust, where danced the motley band;
Stage ever changing! still the pilgrim's guide
From earth's remotest shores, who here have smiled or
sighed,

Pouring the thought or passion of the hour,
Great Colosseum! at thy mighty shrine:

Earth's bosom cumbered with the wrecks of power,
Shows naught beneath the sky to match with thine:
Earthquakes have heaved, storms rent, time worn each
line