Yet not with heedless eye will we survey The scene though changed, nor negligently tread; These variegated walks, however gay, Were once the silent mansions of the dead. In every shrub, in every floweret's bloom That paints with different hues yon smiling plain, Some hero's ashes issue from the tomb, And live a vegetative life again. For matter dies not, as the sages say, But shifts to other forms the pliant mass, When the free spirit quits its cumberous clay, And sees, beneath, the rolling planets pass. Perhaps, my Villiers, for I sing to thee, The sacred dust of young Marcellus lives. Pluck not the leaf, 't were sacrilege to wound In these sad seats an early grave he found, Witness thou field of Mars, that oft hadst known Witness, thou Tuscan stream, where oft he glowed In sportive strugglings with the opposing wave, Fast by the recent tomb thy waters flowed, O lost too soon!-yet why lament a fate To live, to die, admired, esteemed, beloved. Weak are our judgments, and our passions warm, And much we pardon to ingenuous youth. Too oft we satiate on the applause we pay * * William Whitehead. THE PILLAR OF TRAJAN. HERE towers are crushed, and unforbidden weeds WE O'er mutilated arches shed their seeds, And temples, doomed to milder change, unfold Or aught in Syrian deserts left to save From death the memory of the good and brave. Ascend, with lineaments in air not lost: Still as he turns, the charmed spectator sees So, pleased with purple clusters to entwine Borne by the Muse from rills in shepherds' ears Murmuring but one smooth story for all years, I gladly commune with the mind and heart Of him who thus survives by classic art, His actions witness, venerate his mien, And study Trajan as by Pliny seen; Behold how fought the chief whose conquering sword Memorial pillar! mid the wrecks of time Preserve thy charge with confidence sublime, The exultations, pomps, and cares of Rome, Whence half the breathing world received its doom: Things that recoil from language; that, if shown By apter pencil, from the light had flown. there the storm Of battle meets him in authentic form! Unharnessed, naked troops of Moorish horse Sweep to the charge; more high, the Dacian force, Spirit in him pre-eminent, who guides, From honored instruments that round him wait; That, when his age was measured with his aim, Where now the haughty empire that was spread With such fond hope? Her very speech is dead; Yet glorious Art the power of Time defies, And Trajan still, through various enterprise, Mounts, in this fine illusion, toward the skies: Still are we present with the imperial chief, William Wordsworth. BIRDS IN THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN. E Whose carols antedate the Roman spring; Who, while the old gray walls, thy playmates, ring, Dost evermore on one deep strain insist; Flinging thy bell-notes through the sunset mist! That sucks from them aerial amethyst, nay ! Aubrey de Vere. THE BATHS OF CARACALLA. EASTWARD hence, Nigh where the Cestian pyramid divides |