Part III: Rome

Here melting mixed with air the ideal forms
That painted still whate'er the goddess sung.
Then I, impatient: —' From extinguished Greece,
To what new region streamed the human day? '
She softly sighing, as when Zephyr leaves.
Resigned to Boreas, the declining year.
Resumed: —' Indignant, these last scenes I fled;
And long ere then, Leucadia's cloudy cliff
And the Ceraunian hills behind me thrown,
All Latium stood aroused. Ages before,
Great mother of republics! Greece had poured,
Swarm after swarm, her ardent youth around.
On Asia, Afric, Sicily, they stooped,
But chief on fair Hesperia's winding shore;
Where, from Lacinium to Etrurian vales,
They rolled increasing colonies along,
And lent materials for my Roman reign.
With them my spirit spread; and numerous states
And cities rose on Grecian models formed,
As its parental policy and arts
Each had imbibed. Besides, to each assigned,
A guardian genius o'er the public weal
Kept an unclosing eye; tried to sustain
Or more sublime the soul infused by me:
And strong the battle rose, with various wave,
Against the tyrant demons of the land.
Thus they their httle wars and triumphs knew,
Their flows of fortune and receding times —
But almost all below the proud regard
Of story vowed to Rome, on deeds intent
That truth beyond the flight of fable bore.
'Not so the Samian sage; to him belongs
The brightest witness of recording fame.
For these free states his native isle forsook
And a vain tyrant's transitory smile,
He sought Crotona's pure salubrious air,
And through Great Greece his gentle wisdom taught —
Wisdom that calmed for listening years the mind,
Nor ever heard amid the storm of zeal.
His mental eye first launched into the deeps
Of boundless ether, where unnumbered orbs,
Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky
Unerring roll, and wind their steady way.
There he the full consenting choir beheld;
There first discerned the secret band of love.
The kind attraction that to central suns
Binds circling earths, and world with world unites.
Instructed thence, he great ideas formed
Of the whole-moving, all-informing God,
The Sun of beings! beaming unconfined
Light, life, and love, and ever active power —
Whom nought can image, and who best approves
The silent worship of the moral heart,
That joys in bounteous Heaven and spreads the joy.
Nor scorned the soaring sage to stoop to life,
And bound his reason to the sphere of man.
He gave the four yet reigning virtues name.
Inspired the study of the finer arts.
That civilize mankind, and laws devised
Where with enlightened justice mercy mixed.
He even into his tender system took
Whatever shares the brotherhood of life:
He taught that life's indissoluble flame,
From brute to man, and man to brute again,
For ever shifting, runs the eternal round;
Thence tried against the blood-polluted meal,
And limbs yet quivering with some kindred soul,
To turn the human heart. Delightful truth!
Had he beheld the living chain ascend,
And not a circling form, but rising whole.
'Amid these small republics one arose
On yellow Tiber's bank, almighty Rome,
Fated for me. A nobler spirit warmed
Her sons; and, roused by tyrants, nobler still
It burned in Brutus, the proud Tarquins chased
With all their crimes, bade radiant eras rise
And the long honours of the consul line.
'Here from the fairer, not the greater, plan
Of Greece I varied; whose unmixing states.
By the keen soul of emulation pierced,
Long waged alone the bloodless war of arts,
And their best empire gained. But to diffuse
O'er men an empire was my purpose now —
To let my martial majesty abroad;
Into the vortex of one state to draw
The whole mixed force, and liberty, on earth;
To conquer tyrants, and set nations free.
'Already have I given, with flying touch,
A broken view of this my amplest reign.
Now, while its first, last, periods you survey,
Mark how it labouring rose, and rapid fell.
'When Rome in noon-tide empire grasped the world,
And, soon as her resistless legions shone.
The nations stooped around, though then appeared
Her grandeur most, yet in her dawn of power,
By many a jealous equal people pressed.
Then was the toll, the mighty struggle then.
Then for each Roman I an hero told;
And every passing sun and Latian scene
Saw patriot virtues then and awful deeds
That or surpass the faith of modern times
Or, if believed, with sacred horror strike.
'For then, to prove my most exalted power,
I to the point of full perfection pushed,
To fondness and enthusiastic zeal.
The great, the reigning passion of the free.
That godlike passion! which, the bounds of self
Divinely bursting, the whole public takes
Into the heart, enlarged, and burning high
With the mixed ardour of unnumbered selves —
Of all who safe beneath the voted laws
Of the same parent state fraternal live.
From this kind sun of moral nature flowed
Virtues that shine the light of humankind.
And, rayed through story, warm remotest time.
These virtues too, reflected to their source.
Increased its flame. The social charm went round,
The fair idea, more attractive still
As more by virtue marked; till Romans, all
One band of friends, unconquerable grew.
'Hence, when their country raised her plaintive voice.
The voice of pleading nature was not heard;
And in their hearts the fathers throbbed no more —
Stern to themselves, but gentle to the whole.
Hence sweetened pain, the luxury of toil;
Patience, that baffled fortune's utmost rage;
High-minded hope, which at the lowest ebb,
When Brennus conquered and when Cannae bled.
The bravest impulse felt and scorned despair.
Hence moderation a new conquest gained —
As on the vanquished, like descending heaven,
Their dewy mercy dropped, their bounty beamed.
And by the labouring hand were crowns bestowed.
Fruitful of men, hence hard laborious life.
Which no fatigue can quell, no season pierce.
Hence Independence, with his little pleased,
Serene and self-sufficient like a god,
In whom corruption could not lodge one charm;
While he his honest roots to gold preferred;
While truly rich, and by his Sabine field
The man maintained, the Roman's splendour all
Was in the public wealth and glory placed —
Or ready, a rough swain, to guide the plough,
Or else, the purple o'er his shoulder thrown
In long majestic flow, to rule the state
With wisdom's purest eye, or, clad in steel.
To drive the steady battle on the foe.
Hence every passion, even the proudest, stooped
To common good — Camillus, thy revenge;
Thy glory, Fabius. All submissive hence,
Consuls, dictators, still resigned their rule,
The very moment that the laws ordained.
Though conquest o'er them clapped her eagle wings,
Her laurels wreathed, and yoked her snowy steeds
To the triumphal car — soon as expired
The latest hour of sway, taught to submit
(A harder lesson that than to command).
Into the private Roman sunk the Chief.
If Rome was served and glorious, careless they
By whom. Their country's fame they deemed their own,
And, above envy, in a rival's train
Sung the loud Io's by themselves deserved.
Hence matchless courage. On Cremera's bank.
Hence fell the Fabii; hence the Decii died;
And Curtius plunged into the flaming gulf.
Hence Regulus the wavering fathers firmed
By dreadful counsel never given before.
For Roman honour sued, and his own doom.
Hence he sustained to dare a death prepared
By Punic rage. On earth his manly look
Relentless fixed, he from a last embrace,
By chains polluted, put his wife aside,
His little children climbing for a kiss;
Then dumb through rows of weeping, wondering friends,
A new illustrious exile! pressed along.
Nor less impatient did he pierce the crowds
Opposing his return, than if, escaped
From long litigious suits, he glad forsook
The noisy town a while and city cloud
To breathe Venafrian or Tarentine air.
Need I these high particulars recount?
The meanest bosom felt a thirst for fame;
Flight their worst death, and shame their only fear.
Life had no charms, nor any terrors fate,
When Rome and glory called. But, in one view,
Mark the rare boast of these unequalled times.
Ages revolved unsullied by a crime:
Astrea reigned, and scarcely needed laws
To bind a race elated with the pride
Of virtue, and disdaining to descend
To meanness, mutual violence, and wrongs.
While war around them raged, in happy Rome
All peaceful smiled, all save the passing clouds
That often hang on Freedom's jealous brow;
And fair unblemished centuries elapsed
When not a Roman bled but in the field.
Their virtue such that an unbalanced state.
Still between noble and plebeian tossed.
As flowed the wave of fluctuating power.
By that kept firm and with triumphant prow
Rode out the storms. Oft though the native feuds
That from the first their constitution shook
(A latent ruin, growing as it grew)
Stood on the threatening point of civil war
Ready to rush — yet could the lenient voice
Of wisdom, soothing the tumultuous soul,
These sons of virtue calm. Their generous hearts,
Unpetrified by self, so naked lay
And sensible to truth that o'er the rage
Of giddy faction, by oppression swelled,
Prevailed a simple fable, and at once
To peace recovered the divided state.
But, if their often-cheated hopes refused
The soothing touch, still, in the love of Rome,
The dread dictator found a sure resource.
Was she assaulted? was her glory stained?
One common quarrel wide inflamed the whole.
Foes in the forum in the field were friends.
By social danger bound— each fond for each,
And for their dearest country all, to die.
'Thus up the hill of empire slow they toiled,
Till, the bold summit gained, the thousand states
Of proud Italia blended into one;
Then o'er the nations they resistless rushed.
And touched the limits of the failing world.
'Let fancy's eye the distant lines unite.
See that which borders wild the western main.
Where storms at large resound, and tides immense;
From Caledonia's dim cerulean coast,
And moist Hibernia, to where Atlas, lodged
Amid the restless clouds and leaning heaven.
Hangs o'er the deep that borrows thence its name.
Mark that opposed, where first the springing morn
Her roses sheds, and shakes around her dews —
From the dire deserts by the Caspian laved
To where the Tigris and Euphrates, joined,
Impetuous tear the Babylonian plain.
And blest Arabia aromatic breathes.
See that dividing far the watery north.
Parent of floods! from the majestic Rhine,
Drunk by Batavian meads, to where, seven-mouthed,
In Euxine waves the flashing Danube roars;
To where the frozen Tanais scarcely stirs
The dead Maeotic pool, or the long Rha
In the black Scythian sea his torrent throws.
Last, that beneath the burning zone behold.
See where it runs from the deep-loaded plains
Of Mauritania to the Libyan sands,
Where Ammon lifts amid the torrid waste
A verdant isle with shade and fountain fresh,
And farther to the full Egyptian shore.
To where the Nile from Ethiopian clouds.
His never drained ethereal urn, descends.
In this vast space what various tongues and states!
What bounding rocks and mountains, floods and seas!
What purple tyrants quelled, and nations freed!
'O'er Greece descended chief, with stealth divine,
The Roman bounty in a flood of day:
As at her Isthmian games, a fading pomp!
Her full-assembled youth innumerous swarmed.
On a tribunal raised Flaminius sat:
A victor he, from the deep phalanx pierced
Of iron-coated Macedon, and back
The Grecian tyrant to his bounds repelled.
In the high thoughtless gaiety of game.
While sport alone their unambitious hearts
Possessed, the sudden trumpet, sounding hoarse,
Bade silence o'er the bright assembly reign.
Then thus a herald: — " To the states of Greece
The Roman people unconfined restore
Their countries, cities, liberties, and laws:
Taxes remit, and garrisons withdraw."
The crowd, astonished half, and half informed,
Stared dubious round; some questioned, some exclaimed
(Like one who dreaming, between hope and fear,
Is lost in anxious joy) — " Be that again,
Be that again proclaimed, distinct and loud."
Loud and distinct it was again proclaimed;
And, still as midnight in the rural shade
When the gale slumbers, they the words devoured.
A while severe amazement held them mute,
Then, bursting broad, the boundless shout to heaven
From many a thousand hearts ecstatic sprung.
On every hand rebellowed to their joy
The swelling sea, the rocks and vocal hills:
Through all her turrets stately Corinth shook;
And, from the void above of shattered air.
The flitting bird fell breathless to the ground.
What piercing bliss, how keen a sense of fame
Did then, Flaminius, reach thy inmost soul!
And with what deep-felt glory didst thou then
Escape the fondness of transported Greece!
Mixed in a tempest of superior joy,
They left the sports; like Bacchanals they flew.
Each other straining in a strict embrace,
Nor strained a slave; and loud acclaims till night
Round the Proconsul's tent repeated rung.
Then, crowned with garlands, came the festive hours;
And music, sparkling wine, and converse warm
Their raptures waked anew. "Ye gods! " they cried,
" Ye guardian gods of Greece! and are we free?
Was it not madness deemed the very thought?
And is it true? How did we purchase chains?
At what a dire expense of kindred blood?
And are they now dissolved? And scarce one drop
For the fair first of blessings have we paid?
Courage and conduct in the doubtful field
When rages wide the storm of mingling war
Are rare indeed; but how to generous ends
To turn success and conquest, rarer still —
That the great gods and Romans only know.
Lives there on earth, almost to Greece unknown,
A people so magnanimous to quit
Their native soil, traverse the stormy deep,
And by their blood and treasure, spent for us,
Redeem our states, our liberties, and laws!
There does! there does! Oh Saviour Titus! Rome! "
Thus through the happy night they poured their souls,
And in my last reflected beams rejoiced.
As when the shepherd, on the mountain brow,
Sits piping to his flocks and gamesome kids;
Meantime the sun, beneath the green earth sunk,
Slants upward o'er the scene a parting gleam:
Short is the glory that the mountain gilds.
Plays on the glittering flocks and glads the swain;
To western worlds irrevocable rolled.
Rapid the source of light recalls his ray.'
Here interposing I: —' Oh, Queen of men!
Beneath whose sceptre in essential rights
Equal they live, though placed for common good
Various, or in subjection or command.
And that by common choice — alas! the scene,
With virtue, freedom, and with glory bright,
Streams into blood and darkens into woe.'
Thus she pursued: —' Near this great era, Rome
Began to feel the swift approach of fate.
That now her vitals gained — still more and more
Her deep divisions kindling into rage
And war, with chains and desolation charged.
From an unequal balance of her sons
These fierce contentions sprung: and, as increased
This hated inequality, more fierce
They flamed to tumult. Independence failed —
Here by luxurious wants, by real there;
And with this virtue every virtue sunk
As, with the sliding rock, the pile sustained.
A last attempt, too late, the Gracchi made
To fix the flying scale and poise the state.
On one side swelled aristocratic Pride,
With Usury, the villain! whose fell gripe
Bends by degrees to baseness the free soul.
And Luxury rapacious, cruel, mean.
Mother of vice! While on the other crept
A populace in want, with pleasure fired;
Fit for proscriptions, for the darkest deeds,
As the proud feeder bade; inconstant, blind.
Deserting friends at need, and duped by foes;
Loud and seditious, when a chief inspired
Their headlong fury, but, of him deprived,
Already slaves that licked the scourging hand.
'This firm republic that against the blast
Of opposition rose, that (like an oak.
Nursed on feracious Algidum, whose boughs
Still stronger shoot beneath the rigid axe)
By loss, by slaughter, from the steel itself
Even force and spirit drew, smit with the calm.
The dead serene of prosperous fortune, pined.
Nought now her weighty legions could oppose;
Her terror, once, on Afric's tawny shore
Now smoked in dust, a stabling now for wolves;
And every dreaded power received the yoke.
Besides, destructive, from the conquered east
In the soft plunder came that worst of plagues,
The pestilence of mind, a fevered thirst
For the false joys which luxury prepares.
Unworthy joys! that wasteful leave behind
No mark of honour in reflecting hour.
No secret ray to glad the conscious soul —
At once involving in one ruin wealth
And wealth-acquiring powers, while stupid self,
Of narrow gust, and hebetating sense
Devour the nobler faculties of bliss.
Hence Roman virtue slackened into sloth,
Security relaxed the softening state,
And the broad eye of government lay closed.
No more the laws inviolable reigned,
And public weal no more: but party raged.
And partial power and licence unrestrained
Let discord through the deathful city loose.
First, mild Tiberius, on thy sacred head
The fury's vengeance fell; the first whose blood
Had, since the consuls, stained contending Rome.
Of precedent pernicious! with thee bled
Three hundred Romans; with thy brother, next,
Three thousand more — till, into battles turned
Debates of peace, and forced the trembling laws,
The forum and comitia horrid grew,
A scene of bartered power or reeking gore.
When, half-ashamed, corruption's thievish arts
And ruffian force begin to sap the mounds
And majesty of laws; if not in time
Repressed severe, for human aid too strong
The torrent turns, and overbears the whole.
'Thus luxury, dissension, a mixed rage
Of boundless pleasure and of boundless wealth,
Want wishing change, and waste-repairing war,
Rapine for ever lost to peaceful toil,
Guilt unatoned, profuse of blood revenge.
Corruption all avowed, and lawless force,
Each heightening each, alternate shook the state.
Meantime ambition, at the dazzling head
Of hardy legions, with the laurels heaped
And spoil of nations, in one circling blast
Combined in various storm, and from its base
The broad republic tore. By virtue built
It touched the skies, and spread o'er sheltered earth
An ample roof: by virtue too sustained.
And balanced steady, every tempest sung
Innoxious by, or bade it firmer stand.
But when, with sudden and enormous change,
The first of mankind sunk into the last.
As once in virtue, so in vice extreme,
This universal fabric yielded loose,
Before ambition still; and thundering down.
At last, beneath its ruins crushed a world.
A conquering people to themselves a prey
Must ever fall, when their victorious troops.
In blood and rapine savage grown, can find
No land to sack and pillage but their own.
'By brutal Marius, and keen Sylla, first
Effused the deluge dire of civil blood,
Unceasing woes began, and this, or that,
(Deep-drenching their revenge) nor virtue spared.
Nor sex, nor age, nor quality, nor name;
Till Rome, into an human shambles turned,
Made deserts lovely. — Oh, to well-earned chains,
Devoted race! — If no true Roman then.
No Scaevola, there was to raise for me
A vengeful hand — was there no father, robbed
Of blooming youth to prop his withered age?
No son, a witness to his hoary sire
In dust and gore defiled? no friend, forlorn?
No wretch that doubtful trembled for himself?
None brave, or wild, to pierce a monster's heart,
Who, heaping horror round, no more deserved
The sacred shelter of the laws he spurned?
No: — Sad o'er all profound dejection sat;
And nerveless fear. The slave's asylum theirs —
Or flight, ill-judging that the timid back
Turns weak to slaughter, or partaken guilt.
In vain from Sylla's vanity I drew
An unexampled deed. The power resigned,
And all unhoped the commonwealth restored,
Amazed the public, and effaced his crimes.
Through streets yet streaming from his murderous hand
Unarmed he strayed, unguarded, unassailed.
And on the bed of peace his ashes laid —
A grace, which I to his demission gave.
But with him died not the despotic soul.
Ambition saw that stooping Rome could bear
A master, nor had virtue to be free.
Hence, for succeeding years, my troubled reign
No certain peace, no spreading prospect knew.
Destruction gathered round. Still the black soul
Or of a Catiline or Rullus swelled
With fell designs; and all the watchful art
Of Cicero demanded, all the force,
All the state-wielding magic of his tongue.
And all the thunder of my Cato's zeal.
With these I lingered; till the flame anew
Burst out in blaze immense, and wrapped the world.
The shameful contest sprung; to whom mankind
Should yield the neck— to Pompey, who concealed
A rage impatient of an equal name.
Or to the nobler Caesar, on whose brow
O'er daring vice deluding virtue smiled.
And who no less a vain superior scorned.
Both bled, but bled in vain. New traitors rose.
The venal will be bought, the base have lords.
To these vile wars I left ambitious slaves;
And from Philippi's field, from where in dust
The last of Romans, matchless Brutus! lay,
Spread to the north untamed a rapid wing.
'What though the first smooth Caesars arts caressed,
Merit, and virtue, simulating me?
Severely tender, cruelly humane
The chain to clinch, and make it softer sit
On the new-broken still ferocious state!
From the dark third, succeeding, I beheld
The imperial monsters all — a race on earth
Vindictive sent, the scourge of humankind!
Whose blind profusion drained a bankrupt world;
Whose lust to forming nature seems disgrace;
And whose infernal rage bade every drop
Of ancient blood that yet retained my flame,
To that of Paetus, in the peaceful bath
Or Rome's affrighted streets inglorious flow.
But almost just the meanly patient death
That waits a tyrant's unprevented stroke.
Titus indeed gave one short evening gleam;
More cordial felt, as in the midst it spread
Of storm and horror. The delight of men!
He who the day when his o'erflowing hand
Had made no happy heart concluded lost;
Trajan and he, with the mild sire and son,
His son of virtue! eased awhile mankind;
And arts revived beneath their gentle beam.
Then was their last effort: what sculpture raised
To Trajan's glory following triumphs stole,
And mixed with Gothic forms (the chisel's shame)
On that triumphal arch the forms of Greece.
'Meantime o'er rocky Thrace and the deep vales
Of gelid Haemus I pursued my flight;
And, piercing farthest Scythia, westward swept
Sarmatia, traversed by a thousand streams,
A sullen land of lakes, and fens immense,
Of rocks, resounding torrents, gloomy heaths,
And cruel deserts black with sounding pine,
Where nature frowns — though sometimes into smiles
She softens, and immediate at the touch
Of southern gales throws from the sudden glebe
Luxuriant pasture and a waste of flowers.
But, cold-compressed, when the whole-loaded heaven
Descends in snow, lost in one white abrupt
Lies undistinguished Earth; and, seized by frost.
Lakes, headlong streams, and floods, and oceans sleep.
Yet there life glows; the furry millions there
Deep-dig their dens beneath the sheltering snows:
And there a race of men prolific swarms,
To various pain, to little pleasure used,
On whom keen-parching beat Riphaean winds,
Hard like their soil, and like their climate fierce,
The nursery of nations! — These I roused,
Drove land on land, on people people poured,
Till from almost perpetual night they broke
As if in search of day, and o'er the banks
Of yielding empire, only slave-sustained,
Resistless raged — in vengeance urged by me.
'Long in the barbarous heart the buried seeds
Of freedom lay, for many a wintry age;
And, though my spirit worked, by slow degrees
Nought but its pride and fierceness yet appeared.
Then was the night of time, that parted worlds.
I quitted earth the while. As when the tribes
Aerial, warned of rising winter, ride
Autumnal winds, to warmer climates borne —
So, arts and each good genius in my train,
I cut the closing gloom, and soared to heaven.
'In the bright regions there of purest day,
Far other scenes and palaces arise,
Adorned profuse with other arts divine.
All beauty here below, to them compared,
Would, like a rose before the midday sun,
Shrink up its blossom — like a bubble break
The passing poor magnificence of kings.
For there the king of nature in full blaze
Calls every splendour forth, and there his court,
Amid ethereal powers and virtues holds —
Angel, archangel, tutelary gods,
Of cities, nations, empires, and of worlds.
But sacred be the veil that kindly clouds
A light too keen for mortals — wraps a view
Too softening fair, for those that here in dust
Must cheerful toil out their appointed years.
A sense of higher life would only damp
The schoolboy's task, and spoil his playful hours.
Nor could the child of reason, feeble man.
With vigour through this infant-being drudge,
Did brighter worlds, their unimagined bliss
Disclosing, dazzle and dissolve his mind.'