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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,
Perhaps, unknowing of the bloom it gives,
In you fair scion of Apollo's tree

The sacred dust of young Marcellus lives.

Pluck not the leaf, 't were sacrilege to wound
The ideal memory of so sweet a shade;

In these sad seats an early grave he found,
And the first rites to gloomy Dis conveyed.

Witness thou field of Mars, that oft hadst known
His youthful triumphs in the mimic war,
Thou heardst the heartfelt, universal groan
When o'er thy bosom rolled the funeral car.

Witness, thou Tuscan stream, where oft he glowed In sportive strugglings with the opposing wave,

Fast by the recent tomb thy waters flowed,
While wept the wife, the virtuous, and the brave.

O lost too soon!-yet why lament a fate
By thousands envied and by Heaven approved?
Rare is the boon to those of longer date

To live, to die, admired, esteemed, beloved.

Weak are our judgments, and our passions warm,
And slowly dawns the radiant morn of truth,
Our expectations hastily we form,

And much we pardon to ingenuous youth.

Too oft we satiate on the applause we pay
To rising merit, and resume the crown;
Full many a blooming genius, snatched away,
Has fallen lamented who had lived unknown.

*

*

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
A new magnificence that vies with old,
Firm in its pristine majesty hath stood
A votive column, spared by fire and flood;
And, though the passions of man's fretful race
Have never ceased to eddy round its base,
Not injured more by touch of meddling hands
Than a lone obelisk, mid Nubian sands

Or aught in Syrian deserts left to save

From death the memory of the good and brave.
Historic figures round the shaft embost

Ascend, with lineaments in air not lost:

Still as he turns, the charmed spectator sees
Group winding after group, with dream-like ease;
Triumphs in sun-bright gratitude displayed,
Or softly stealing into modest shade.

So, pleased with purple clusters to entwine
Some lofty elm-tree, mounts the daring vine;
The woodbine so, with spiral grace, and breathes
Wide-spreading odors from her flowery wreaths.

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
Stretched far as earth might own a single lord;
In the delight of moral prudence schooled,
How feelingly at home the sovereign ruled;
Best of the good, in pagan faith allied
To more than man, by virtue deified.

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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.
A pontiff, Trajan here the gods implores,
There greets an embassy from Indian shores:
Lo! he harangues his cohorts,

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,
To hoof and finger mailed; — yet, high or low,
None bleed, and none lie prostrate but the foe;
In every Roman, through all turns of fate,
Is Roman dignity inviolate;

Spirit in him pre-eminent, who guides,
Supports, adorns, and over all presides;
Distinguished only by inherent state

From honored instruments that round him wait;
Rise as he may, his grandeur scorns the test
Of outward symbol, nor will deign to rest
On aught by which another is deprest.
Alas! that one thus disciplined could toil
To enslave whole nations on their native soil;
So emulous of Macedonian fame,

That, when his age was measured with his aim,
He drooped, mid else unclouded victories,
And turned his eagles back with deep-drawn sighs.
O weakness of the great! O folly of the wise!

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,
Nor cease to gaze upon the bold relief,
Till Rome, to silent marble unconfined,
Becomes with all her years a vision of the mind.

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!
Touched by thy song rich weeds and wall-flowers swing
As in a breeze, the twilight crimsoning

That sucks from them aerial amethyst,
O for a sibyl's insight to reveal
That lore thou sing'st of! Shall I guess it ?
Enough to hear thy strain, enough to feel
O'er all the extended soul the freshness steal
Of those ambrosial honeydews that weigh
Down with sweet force the azure lids of day.

nay !

Aubrey de Vere.

THE BATHS OF CARACALLA.

EASTWARD hence,

Nigh where the Cestian pyramid divides
The mouldering wall, behold yon fabric huge,
Whose dust the solemn antiquarian turns,
And thence, in broken sculptures cast abroad

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