With one long yell that sends the startled blood
With thrill and sudden flush into the cheeks,
A hundred trumpets screaming, — the dull thump
Of horses galloping across the sand, -

The clang of scabbards, the sharp clash of steel,
Live swords, that whirl a circle of gray fire,
Brass helmets flashing 'neath their streaming hair,
A universal tumult, then a hush

Worse than the tumult,

all eyes straining down To the arena's pit, all lips set close,

All muscles strained, and then that sudden yell, Habet!"That's Rome," says Lucius: so it is! That is, 't is his Rome, 't is not yours and mine. William Wetmore Story.

THE ARCH OF TITUS.

I STOOD beneath the Arch of Titus long;

On Hebrew forms there sculptured long I pored; Till fancy, by a distant clarion stung,

Woke; and methought there moved that arch toward
A Roman triumph. Lance and helm and sword
Glittered; white coursers tramped and trumpets rung:
Last came, car-borne amid a captive throng,
The laurelled son of Rome's imperial lord.
As though by wings of unseen eagles fanned

The Conqueror's cheek, when first that arch he saw,
Burned with the flush he strove in vain to quell.
Titus! a loftier arch than thine hath spanned
Rome and the world with empery and law;
Thereof each stone was hewn from Israel!

Aubrey de Vere.

HOME

THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK.

[OMEWARD turning from the music which had so entranced my brain,

That the way I scarce remembered to the Pincian Hill again,

Nay, was willing to forget it underneath a moon so

fair,

In a solitude so sacred, and so summer-like an air, Came I to the side of Tiber, hardly conscious where

I stood,

Till I marked the sullen murmur of the venerable flood.

Rome lay doubly dead around me, sunk in silence calm and deep:

"T was the death of desolation, and the nightly one of

sleep.

Dreams alone, and recollections, peopled now the solemn

hour,

Such a spot and such a season well might wake the Fancy's power;

Yet no monumental fragment, storied arch, or temple

vast,

Mid the mean plebeian buildings loudly whispered of

the Past.

Tethered by the shore, some barges hid the wave's august repose;

Petty sheds of humble merchants nigh the Campus Martius rose;

Hardly could the dingy Thamis, when his tide is ebb

ing low,

Life's dull scene in colder colors to the homesick exile

show.

Winding from the vulgar prospect, through a labyrinth of lanes,

Forth I stepped upon the Corso where its greatness Rome retains.

Yet it was not ancient glory, though the midnight radiance fell

Soft on many a princely mansion, many a dome's majestic swell;

Though, from some hushed corner gushing, oft a modern fountain gleamed,

Where the marble and the waters in their freshness equal seemed:

What though open courts unfolded columns of Corinthian mould ?

-

Beautiful it was, but altered! naught bespake the Rome of old.

So, regardless of the grandeur, passed I towards the Northern Gate;

All around were shining gardens, churches glittering, yet sedate;

Heavenly bright the broad enclosure! but the o'erwhelming silence brought

Stillness to mine own heart's beating, with a moment's truce of thought,

And I started as I found me walking, ere I was aware, O'er the Obelisk's tall shadow, on the pavement of the

square.

Ghost-like seemed it to address me, and conveyed me

for a while,

Backward, through a thousand ages, to the borders of the Nile;

Where, for centuries, every morning saw it creeping, long and dun,

O'er the stones perchance of Memphis, or the City of

the Sun.

Kingly turrets looked upon it, pyramids and sculptured fanes;

Towers and palaces have mouldered, but the shadow still remains.

Out of that lone tomb of Egypt, o'er the seas the trophy flew;

Here the eternal apparition met the millions' daily view. Virgil's foot has touched it often, it hath kissed Octavia's face,

Royal chariots have rolled o'er it, in the frenzy of the

race,

When the strong, the swift, the valiant, mid the thronged arena strove,

In the days of good Augustus and the dynasty of

Jove.

Herds are feeding in the Forum, as in old Evander's

time;

Tumbled from the steep Tarpeian all the towers that sprang sublime.

Strange that what seemed most inconstant should the most abiding prove;

Strange that what is hourly moving no mutation can

remove:

Ruined lies the cirque! the chariots, long ago, have ceased to roll,

Even the Obelisk is broken,

whole.

- but the shadow still is

What is Fame! if mightiest empires leave so little mark behind,

How much less must heroes hope for, in the wreck of humankind!

Less than even this darksome picture, which I tread beneath my feet,

Copied by a lifeless moonbeam on the pebbles of the

street;

Since, if Cæsar's best ambition, living, was to be re

nowned,

What shall Cæsar leave behind him save the shadow

of a sound?

Thomas William Parsons.

A

MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS.

MID these mouldering walls, this marble round, Where slept the heroes of the Julian name, Say, shall we linger still in thought profound, And meditate the mournful paths to fame?

What though no cypress shades, in funeral rows, No sculptured urns, the last records of fate, O'er the shrunk terrace wave their baleful boughs, Or breathe in storied emblems of the great;