Of thy majestic fabric, but the eye O'erteeming, nothing grander can combine. Thou wonder, pride, and awe of all that pass thee by. Hark! the night's slumberous air is musical With the low carolling of birds that seem How do their notes and nature's flowers redeem Of immolation as a welcome feast, Ages have cleansed the guilt, the unnatural strife hath ceased. The white flowers blossom chapleting a ground Whose dust was human, they bloom not the less; Where be the myriads once those seats that crowned? They gazed on thee, broad Moon! but did not bless Thine urn, from which they drank no gentleness: The fight, the hunt, the galley's crashing prow, Such were their morning hopes of happiness, For which they waited with as feverish brow As for some worthless aim our hearts are beating now. Yet rest forgiveness on their memory! They knew not their vast souls. Lo! how ascend Tier above tier those benches that extend In shattered circles, where the Roman sate, While on his nod, or voice, or finger's bend, The gladiator read remorseless fate; Even so might life or death on one slight motion wait! Along its shattered edges on a sky Of azure, sharply, delicately traced, The light bird flits o'er flowers that wave from high, And broken columns freshly, wildly spread; So stretches that Titanic skeleton: Its shattered and enormous circle rent, The actors past to dust, forever quenched the fire! John Edmund Reade. THE COLISEUM. YPE of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary TYPE Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length, at length, after so many days (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie), Vastness, and age, and memories of eld! I feel ye now, I feel ye in your strength, O spells more sure than e'er Judæan king O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair But stay! these walls, these ivy-clad arcades, These mouldering plinths, these sad and blackened shafts, All of the famed and the colossal left are they all, "Not all," the echoes answer me, "not all! We rule the hearts of mightiest men, we rule We are not impotent, we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone, not all our fame, Edgar Allan Poe. IN THE COLISEUM. YO stand within the Coliseum's walls, Go And mid the sunny stillness call again The Roman multitudes of olden days Back to their cruel lives athirst for blood, A palpitating mass of eager zest; Who deemed himself a god, set in their midst; That moment's calm, when those about to die Of what their amphitheatre is now, One keen and instant sense of mortal fate, Would they have gone out, fear-struck to their souls? Or would the whole assembly, smote at once With this same realizing, madly rise In all their lusty health, and with one shout The gladiator's words, "About to die, O Cæsar, we salute thee, we - who die!" THE CIRCUS. Sarah Bridges Stebbins. HE pants to stand In its vast circus, all alive with heads And quivering arms and floating robes, the air |