echo to the sound of home,
No shame that suns should rise to light a conquer’d Rome.
XXVI
That troublous night is over: on the brow
Of thy stern hill, thou mighty Capitol,
One form stands gazing: silently below
The morning mists from tower and temple roll,
And lo! the eternal city, as they rise,
Bursts, in majestic beauty, on her conqueror’s eyes.
XXVII
Yes, there he stood, upon that silent hill,
And there beneath his feet his conquest lay:
Unlike that ocean-city, gazing still
Smilingly forth upon her sunny bay,
But o’er her vanisht might and humbled pride
Mourning, as widowed Venice o’er her Adrian tide.
XXVIII
Breathe there not spirits on the peopled air?
Float there not voices on the murmuring wind?
Oh! sound there not some strains of sadness there,
To touch with sorrow even a victor’s mind,
And wrest one tear from joy! Oh! who shall pen
The thoughts that toucht thy breast, thou lonely conqueror, then?
XXIX
Perchance his wandering heart was far away,
Lost in dim memories of his early home,
And his young dreams of conquest; how to-day
Beheld him master of Imperial Rome,
Crowning his wildest hopes: perchance his eyes
As they looked sternly on, beheld new victories,
XXX
New dreams of wide dominion, mightier, higher,
Come floating up from the abyss of years;
Perchance that solemn sight might quench the fire
Even of that ardent spirit; hopes and fears
Might well be mingling at that murmured sigh,
Whispering from all around, “All earthly things must die.”
XXXI
Perchance that wondrous city was to him
But as one voiceless blank; a place of graves,
And recollections indistinct and dim,
Whose sons were conquerors once, and now were slaves:
It may be in that desolate sight his eye
Saw but another step to climb to victory!
XXXII
Alas! that fiery spirit little knew
The change of life, the nothingness of power,
How both were hastening, as they flowered and grew,
Nearer and nearer to their closing hour:
How every birth of time’s miraculous womb
Swept off the withered leaves that hide the naked tomb.
XXXIII
One little year; that restless soul shall rest,
That frame of vigour shall be crumbling clay,
And tranquilly, above that troubled breast,
The sunny waters hold their joyous way:
And gently shall the murmuring ripples flow,
Nor wake the weary soul that slumbers on below.
XXXIV
Alas! far other thoughts might well be ours
And dash our holiest raptures while we gaze:
Energies wasted, unimproved hours,
The saddening visions of departed days:
And while they rise here might we stand alone,
And mingle with thy ruins somewhat of our own.
XXXV
Beautiful city! If departed things
Ever again put earthly likeness on,
Here should a thousand forms on fancy’s wings
Float up to tell of ages that are gone:
Yea, though hand touch thee not, nor eye should see,
Still should the spirit hold communion, Rome, with thee!
XXXVI
O! it is bitter, that each fairest dream
Should fleet before us but to melt away;
That wildest visions still should loveliest seem
And soonest fade in the broad glare of day:
That while we feel the world is dull and low,
Gazing on thee, we wake to find it is not so.
XXXVII
A little while, alas! a little while,
And the same world has tongue, and ear, and eye,
The careless glance, the cold unmeaning smile,
The thoughtless word, the lack of sympathy!
Who would not turn him from the barren sea
And rest his weary eyes on the green land and thee!
XXXVIII
So pass we on. But oh! to harp aright
The vanisht glories of thine early day,
There needs a minstrel of diviner might,
A holier incense than this feeble lay;
To chant thy requiem with more passionate breath,
And twine with bolder hand thy last memorial wreath!
High fate is theirs, ye sleepless waves, whose ear
Learns Freedom’s lesson from your voice of fear;
Whose spell-bound sense from childhood’s hour hath known
Familiar meanings in your mystic tone:
Sounds of deep import—voices that beguile
Age of its tears and childhood of its smile,
To yearn with speechless impulse to the free
And gladsome greetings of the buoyant sea!
High fate is theirs, who where the silent sky
Stoops to the soaring mountains, live and die;
Who scale the cloud-capt height, or sink to rest
In the deep stillness of its shelt’ring breast;—
Around whose feet the exulting waves have sung,
The eternal hills their giant shadows flung.
No wonders nurs’d thy childhood; not for thee
Did the waves chant their song of liberty!
Thine was no mountain home, where Freedom’s form
Abides enthron’d amid the mist and storm,
And whispers to the listening winds, that swell
With solemn cadence round her citadel!
These had no sound for thee: that cold calm eye
Lit with no rapture as the storm swept by,
To mark with shiver’d crest the reeling wave
Hide his torn head beneath his sunless cave;
Or hear, ’mid circling crags, the impatient cry
Of the pent winds, that scream in agony!
Yet all high sounds that mountain children hear
Flash’d from thy soul upon thine inward ear;
All Freedom’s mystic language—storms that roar
By hill or wave, the mountain or the shore—
All these had stirr’d thy spirit, and thine eye
In common sights read secret sympathy;
Till all bright thoughts that hills or waves can yield,
Deck’d the dull waste, and the familiar field;
Or wondrous sounds from tranquil skies were borne
Far o’er the glistening sheets of windy corn:
Skies—that unbound by clasp of mountain chain,
Slope stately down, and melt into the plain;
Sounds—such as erst the lone wayfaring man
Caught, as he journeyed, from the lips of Pan;
Or that mysterious cry, that smote with fear,
Like sounds from other worlds, the Spartan’s ear,
While o’er the dusty plain, the murmurous throng
Of Heaven’s embattled myriads swept along.
Say not such dreams are idle: for the man
Still toils to perfect what the child began;
And thoughts, that were but outlines, time engraves
Deep
