Select Works of the British Poets

Courted by kings, and by contending states Assum'd the boasted honor of their birth.

In Architecture, too, thy rank supreme!
That art where most magnificent appears
The little builder man; by thee refin'd,
And, smiling higa, to full perfection brought.
Such thy sure rules, that Goths of every age,
Who scorn'd their aid, have only loaded Earth
With labor'd heavy monuments of shame.
Not those gay domes that o'er thy splendid shore
Shot, all proportion, up. First unadorn'd,
And nobly plain, the manly Doric rose;
Th' Ionic then, with decent matron grace,
Her airy pillar heav'd; luxuriant last,

The rich Corinthian spread her wanton wreath.
The whole so measur'd true, so lessen'd off
By fine proportion, that the marble pile,
Form'd to repel the still or stormy waste
Of rolling ages, light as fabrics look'd
That from the magic wand aërial rise.

Where are they now?" I cried, "say, goddess, where?

And what the land thy darling thus of old?" Sunk!" she resum'd: deep in the kindred gloom

Of superstition, and of slavery, sunk!

No glory now can touch their hearts, benumb'd
By loose dejected sloth and servile fear;

No science pierce the darkness of their minds;
No nobler art the quick ambitious soul
Of imitation in their breast awake.
Ev'n, to supply the needful arts of life,
Mechanic toil denies the hopeless hand.
Scarce any trace remaining, vestige grey,
Or nodding column on the desert shore,
To point where Corinth or where Athens stood.
A faithless land of violence, and death!
Where Commerce parleys, dubious, on the shore;
And his wild impulse curious search restrains,
Afraid to trust th' inhospitable clime.
Neglected Nature fails; in sordid want
Sunk, and debas'd, their beauty beams no more.
The Sun himself seems angry, to regard,
Of light unworthy, the degenerate race;
And fires them oft with pestilential rays:
While Earth, blue poison steaming on the skies,
Indignant, shakes them from her troubled sides.
But as from man to man, Fate's first decree,
Impartial Death the tide of riches rolls,
So states must die, and Liberty go round.
"Fierce was the stand, ere virtue, valor, arts,
And the soul fir'd by me (that often, stung
With thoughts of better times and old renown,
From hydra-tyrants tried to clear the land)
Lay quite extinct in Greece, their works effac'd,
And gross o'er all unfeeling bondage spread.
Sooner I mov'd my much-reluctant flight,

When Xerxes pour'd his millions o'er the land,
Sparta, by turns, and Athens, vilely sued;
Sued to be venal parricides, to spill

Their country's bravest blood, and on themselves
To turn their matchless mercenary arms.
Peaceful in Susa, then, sate the great king*
And by the trick of treaties, the still waste
Of sly corruption, and barbaric gold,
Effected what his steel could ne'er perform.
Profuse he gave them the luxurious draught.
Inflaming all the land: unbalanc'd wide
Their tottering states; their wild assemblies rul'd
As the winds turn at every blast the seas:
And by their listed orators, whose breath
Still with a factious storm infested Greece,
Rous'd them to civil war, or dash'd them down
To sordid peace.t-Peace! that, when Sparta

shook

Astonish'd Artaxerxes on his throne,
Gave up, fair-spread o'er Asia's sunny shore,
Their kindred cities, to perpetual chains.
What could so base, so infamous a thought.
In Spartan hearts inspire? Jealous, they saw
Respiring Athens rear again her walls;
And the pale fury fir'd them, once again
To crush this rival city to the dust.
For now no more the noble social soul
Of Liberty my families combin'd;

But by short views, and selfish passions, broke,
Dire as when friends are rankled into foes,
They mix'd severe, and wag'd eternal war;
Nor felt they, furious, their exhausted force;
Nor, with false glory, discord, madness blind,
Saw how the blackening storm from Thracia came.
Long years roll'd on, by many a battle stain'd,
The blush and boast of Fame! where courage, art,
And military glory, shone supreme:

But let detesting ages, from the scene

Of Greece self-mangled, turn the sickening eye.
At last, when bleeding from a thousand wounds,
She felt her spirits fail; and in the dust
Her latest heroes, Nicias, Conon, lay,
Agesilaus, and the Theban Friends :i
The Macedonian vulture mark'd his time,
By the dire scent of Charonea lur'd,¶
And, fierce-descending, seiz'd his hapless prey.
Thus tame submitted to the victor's yoke
Greece, once the gay, the turbulent, the bold;
For every Grace, and Muse, and Science born;
With arts of war, of government. elate;
To tyrants dreadful, dreadful to the best;
Whom I myself could scarcely rule: and thus
The Persian fetters, that enthrall'd the mind,
Were turn'd to formal and apparent chains.
Unless Corruption first deject the pride,

* So the kings of Persia were called by the Greeks. The peace made by Antalcidas, the Lacedæmonian

Pois'd on the doubtful wing: when Greece with admiral, with the Persians; by which the Lacedæmon

Greece

Embroil'd in foul contention fought no more
For common glory, and for common weal:
But, false to freedom, sought to quell the free;
Broke the firm band of peace, and sacred love
That lent the whole irrefragable force;
And, as around the partial trophy blush'd,
Prepar'd the way for total overthrow.

ans abandoned all the Greeks established in the Lesser Asia to the dominion of the king of Persia.

Athens had been dismantled by the Lacedemonians, at the end of the first Peloponnesian war, and was at this time restored by Conon to its former splendor § The Peloponnesian war.

Pelopidas and Epaminondas.

T The battle of Cheronea, in which Philip of Mace

Then to the Persian power, whose pride they scorn'd, [don utterly defeated the Greeks.

And guardian vigor of the free-born soul,
All crude attempts of violence are vain;
For, firm within, and while at heart untouch'd,
Ne'er yet by force was Freedom overcome.
But soon as Independence stoops the head,
To vice enslav'd, and vice-created wants;
Then to some foul corrupting hand, whose waste
These heighten'd wants with fatal bounty feeds:
From man to man the slackening ruin runs,
Till the whole state unnerv'd in slavery sinks."

ROME:

BEING THE THIRD PART OF
LIBERTY,

A POEM.

The Contents of Part III.

And the Ceraunian hills behind me thrown,
All Latium stood arous'd. Ages before,
Great mother of republics! Greece had pour'd,
Swarm after swarm, her ardent youth around.
On Asia, Afric, Sicily, they stoop'd,

But chief on fair Hesperia's winding shore;
Where, from Lacinium* to Etrurian vales,
They roll'd increasing colonies along,
And lent materials for my Roman reign.
With them my spirit spread; and numerous states
And cities rose, on Grecian models form'd;
As its parental policy, and arts,

Each had imbib'd. Besides, to each assign'd
A guardian genius, o'er the public weal,
Kept an unclosing eye; tried to sustain,
Or more sublime, the soul infus'd by me:
And strong the battle rose, with various wave,
Against the tyrant demons of the land.
Thus they their little wars and triumphs knew;
Their flows of fortune, and receding times,
But almost all below the proud regard

As this part contains a description of the establish- Of story vow'd to Rome, on deeds intent ment of Liberty in Rome, it begins with a view That truth beyond the flight of fable bore. of the Grecian colonies settled in the southern Not so the Samian sage;t to him belongs parts of Italy, which with Sicily constituted the The brightest witness of recording fame. Great Greece of the ancients. With these colo- For these free states his native islet forsook, nies the spirit of Liberty, and of republics, And a vain tyrant's transitory smile; spreads over Italy. Transition to Pythagoras and He sought Crotona's pure salubrious air, his philosophy, which he taught through those And through Great Greece his gentle wisdom taugh free states and cities. Amidst the many small Wisdom that calm'd for listening years the mind, republics in Italy, Rome the destined seat of Nor ever heard amid the storm of zeal. Liberty. Her establishment there dated from His mental eye first lanch'd into the deeps the expulsion of the Tarquins. How differing of boundless ether; where unnumber'd orbs, from that in Greece. Reference to a view of the Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky Roman republic given in the first part of this Unerring roll, and wind their steady way. poem: to mark its rise and fall, the peculiar There first discern'd the secret band of love, There he the full consenting choir beheld; purport of this. During its first ages, the greatest force of Liberty and virtue exerted. The source The kind attraction, that to central suns whence derived the heroic virtues of the Ro- Binds circling earths, and world with world unites. Enumeration of these virtues. Thence Instructed thence, he great ideas form'd of the whole-moving, all-informing God, The Sun of beings! beaming unconfin'd 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 scorn'd the soaring sage to stoop to life, And bound his reason to the sphere of man. He gave the four yet reigning virtues¶ name; Inspir'd the study of the finer arts, That civilize mankind, and laws devis'd Where with enlighten'd justice mercy mix'd. He ev'n, into his tender system, took

mans.

Its

their security at home: their glory, success, and empire, abroad. Bounds of the Roman empire, geographically described. The states of Greece restored to Liberty by Titus Quintus Flaminius, the highest instance of public generosity and beneficence. The loss of Liberty in Rome. causes, progress, and completion in the death of Brutus. Rome under the emperors. From Rome, the goddess of Liberty goes among the Northern nations; where, by infusing into them her spirit and general principles, she lays the groundwork of her future establishments: sends them in ven

geance on the Roman empire, now totally enslaved; and then, with arts and sciences in her train, quits Earth during the dark ages. The celestial regions, to which Liberty retired, not proper to be opened to the view of mortals.

HERE melting mix'd with air th' ideal forms,
That painted still whate'er the goddess sung.
Then I, impatient: "From extinguish'd Greece,
To what new region stream'd the human day?"
She softly sighing, as when Zephyr leaves,
Resign'd to Boreas, the declining year,
Resum'd; "Indignant, these last scenes I fled ;*
And long ere then, Leucadia's cloudy cliff,

The last struggles of liberty in Greece.

He taught, that life's indissoluble flame,
From brute to man, and man to brute again,
For ever shifting, runs th' eternal round;
Thence tried against the blood-polluted meal,
And limbs yet quivering with some kindred soul,
To turn the human heart. Delightful truth!

Whatever shares the brotherhood of life:

* A promontory in Calabria.
† Pythagoras.

Samos, over which then reigned the tyrant Polycrates § The southern parts of Italy, and Sicily, so called because of the Grecian colonies there settled.

His scholars were enjoined silence for five years.
The four cardinal virtues.

Had he beheld the living chain ascend,
And not a circling form, but rising whole.

'Amid these small republics one arose,
On yellow Tyber's bank, almighty Rome,
Fated for me. A nobler spirit warm'd
Her sons; and, rous'd by tyrants, nobler still
It burn'd in Brutus: the proud Tarquins chas'd,
With all their crimes; bade radiant eras rise,
And the long honors 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 pierc'd,
Long wag'd alone the bloodless war of arts,
And their best empire gain'd. 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 mix'd force, and liberty, on Earth;
To conquer tyrants, and set nations free.

[world.

When Rome in noon-tide empire grasp'd the
And, soon as her resistless legions shone,

The nations stoop'd around: though then appear'd
Her grandeur most, yet in her dawn of power,
By many a jealous equal people press'd,
Then was the toil, 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 believ'd, with sacred horror strike.

For then, to prove my most exalted power,
I to the point of full perfection push'd,
To fondness or 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, enlarg'd, and burning high
With the mix'd ardor of unnumber'd selves;
Of all who safe beneath the voted laws
Of the same parent state, fraternal, live.
From this kind sun of moral nature flow'd
Virtues, that shine the light of human-kind,
And, ray'd through story, warm remotest time.
These virtues, too, reflected to their source,

While he his honest roots to gold preferr'd;
While truly rich, and by his Sabine field.
The man maintain'd, the Roman's splendor all
Was in the public wealth and glory plae'd :
Or ready, a rough swain, to guide the plow;
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, ev'n the proudest, stoop'd
To common good: Camillus, thy revenge;
Thy glory, Fabius. All submissive hence,
Consuls, dictators, still resign'd their rule,
The very moment that the laws ordain'd.
Though Conquest o'er them clapp'd her eagle-wings
Her laurels wreath'd, and yok'd her snowy steeds
To the triumphal car; soon as expir'd
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 serv'd, and glorious, careless they
By whom. Their country's fame they deem'd ther

own;

And, above envy, in a rival's train,
Sung the loud lös by themselves deserv'd.
Hence matchless courage. On Cremera's bank.
Hence fell the Fabii; hence the Decii died;
And Curtius plung'd into the flaming gulf.
Hence Regulus the wavering fathers firm'd,
By dreadful counsel never giv'n before,
For Roman honor sued, and his own doom.
Hence he sustain'd to dare a death prepar'd
By Punic rage. On earth his manly look

Relentless fix'd. 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 wonder.ag

(friends.

A new illustrious exile! press'd along.
Nor less impatient did he pierce the crowds
Opposing his return, than if, escap'd
From long litigious suits, he glad forsook
The noisy town awhile, 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 call'd. But, in one view

Increas'd its flame. The social charm went round, Mark the rare boast of these unequal'd times.
The fair idea, more attractive still,

[voice,

As more by virtue mark'd: till Romans, all
One band of friends, unconquerable grew.
“Hence, when their country rais'd her plaintive
The voice of pleading Nature was not heard;
And in their hearts the fathers throbb'd no more:
Stern to themselves, but gentle to the whole.
Hence sweeten'd pain, the luxury of toil;
Patience, that baffled Fortune's utmost rage;
High-minded Hope, which at the lowest ebb,
When Brennus conquer'd, and when Cannæ bled,
The bravest impulse felt, and scorn'd despair.
Hence, Moderation a new conquest gain'd;
As on the vanquish'd, like descending Heaven,
Their dewy mercy dropp'd, their bounty beam'd,
And by the laboring hand were crowns bestow'd.
Fruitful of men, hence hard laborious life,
Which no fatigue can quell, no season pierce.
Hence, Independence, with his little pleas'd,
Serene, and self-sufficient, like a god;

In whom Corruption could not lodge one charm,

Ages revolv'd unsullied by a crime;
Astrea reign'd, 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 rag'd, in happy Rome
All peaceful smil'd, all save the passing clouds
That often hang on Freedom's jealous brow!
And fair unblemish'd centuries elaps'd,
When not a Roman bled but in the field.
Their virtue such, that an unbalanc'd state
Still between noble and plebeian tost,
As flow'd the wave of fluctuating power,
Was thence 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,
Those 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 swell'd,
Prevail'd a simple fable, and at once
To peace recover'd the divided state.
But if their often-cheated hopes refus'd

The soothing touch; still, in the love of Rome,
The dread dictator found a sure resource.
Was she assaulted? was her glory stain'd?
One common quarrel wide-inflam'd 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 toil'd:
Till, the bold summit gain'd, the thousand states
Of proud Italia blended into one;
Then o'er the nations they resistless rush'd,
And touch'd 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, lodg'd
Amid the restless clouds, and leaning Heaven,
Hangs o'er the deep that borrows thence its name.
Mark that oppos'd, where first the springing Morn
Her roses sheds, and shakes around her dews:
From the dire deserts by the Caspian lav'd,
To where the Tigris and Euphrates, join'd,
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-mouth'd,
In Euxine waves the flashing Danube roars;
To where the frozen Tanaïs* scarcely stirs
The dead Meotic 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-drain'd ethereal urn, descends.
In this vast space what various tongues, and states!
What bounding rocks, and mountains, floods and
seas?

What purple tyrants quell'd, 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 swarm'd.
On a tribunal rais'd Flaminius sat;

A victor he, from the deep phalanx pierc'd
Of iron-coated Macedon, and back
The Grecian tyrant to his bounds repell'd.
In the high thoughtless gaiety of game,
While sport alone their unambitious hearts
Possess'd; 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, unconfin'd, restore

*The ancient name of the Volga.

The Caspian sea.

The king of Macedonia.

Be that again proclaim'd, distinct, and loud.'
Loud, and distinct, it was again proclaim'd;
And still as midnight in the rural shade,
When the gale slumbers, they the words devour'd.
Awhile severe amazement held them mute;
Then, bursting broad, the boundless shout to Heaven
From many a thousand hearts ecstatic sprung.
On every hand rebellow'd to their joy
The swelling sea, the rocks, and vocal hills:
Through all her turrets stately Corinth shook;
And, from the void above of shatter'd 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!
Mix'd in a tempest of superior joy,
They left the sports; like Bacchanals they flew,
Each other straining in a strict embrace,
Nor strain'd a slave; and loud acclaims till night
Round the proconsul's tent repeated rung.
Then, crown'd with garlands, came the festive Hours,
And music, sparkling wine, and converse warm,
Their raptures wak'd anew.-Ye gods!' they

cried,

Ye guardian gods of Greece! And are we free? Was it not madness deem'd the very thought? And is it true? How did we purchase chains? At what a dire expense of kindred blood? And are they now dissolv'd? 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, savior Titus! Rome!' Thus through the happy night they pour'd their souls,

And in my last reflected beams rejoic'd.

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 roll'd,
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 plac'd, for common good,
Various, or in subjection, or command;
And that by common choice: alas! the scene,
With virtue, freedom, and with glory bright,

§ The Isthmian games were celebrated at Corinth.

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 gain'd; still more and more
Her deep divisions kindling into rage,
And war with chains and desolation charg'd.
From an unequal balance of her sons
These fierce contentions sprung; and, as increas'd
This hated inequality, more fierce

They flam'd to tumult. Independence fail'd;
Here by luxurious wants, by real there;
And with this virtue every virtue sunk,
As, with the sliding rock, the pile sustain'd.
A last attempt, too late, the Gracchi made,
To fix the flying scale, and poise the state.
On one side swell'd 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 fir'd;
Fit for proscriptions, for the darkest deeds,
As the proud feeder bade; inconstant, blind,
Deserting friends at need, and dup'd by foes;
Loud and seditious, when a chief inspir'd
Their headlong fury, but, of him depriv'd,
Already slaves, that lick'd the scourging hand.
This firm republic, that against the blast
Of opposition rose; that (like an oak,
Nurs'd on feracious Algidum, whose boughs
Still stronger shoot beneath the rigid ax)
By loss, by slaughter, from the steel itself,
Ev'n force and spirit drew; smit with the calm,
The dead serene of prosperous fortune, pin'd.
Nought now her weighty legions could oppose;
Her terror once on Afric's tawny shore,*
Now smok'd in dust, a stabling now for wolves;
And every dreaded power receiv'd the yoke.
Besides, destructive, from the conquer'd East,
In the soft plunder came that worst of plagues,
That pestilence of mind, a fever'd thirst
For the false joys which luxury prepares.
Unworthy joys! that wasteful leave behind
No mark of honor, 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 slacken'd into sloth;
Security relax'd the softening state;
And the broad eye of government lay clos'd;
No more the laws inviolable reign'd,

And public weal no more: but party rag'd,
And partial power, and license unrestrain'd,†
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 stain'd contending Rome.
Of precedent pernicious! with thee bled
Three hundred Romans; with thy brother, next,
Three thousand more; till, into battles turn'd
Debates of peace, and forc'd the trembling laws,
The forum and comitia horrid grew,

A scene of barter'd power, or reeking gore.
When, half-asham'd, Corruption's thievish arts
And ruffian force began to sap the mounds
And majesty of laws; if not in time

Repress'd severe, for human aid too strong
The torrent turns, and overbears the whole.
Thus luxury, dissension, a mix'd rage
Of boundless pleasure and of boundless wealth
Want wishing change, and waste repairing war,
Rapine for ever lost to peaceful toil,
Guilt unaton'd, profuse of blood revenge,
Corruption all avow'd, and lawless force,
Each heightening each, alternate shook the state
Meantime ambition, at the dazzling head
Of hardy legions, with the laurels heap'd
And spoil of nations, in one circling blast
Combin'd in various storm, and from its base
The broad republic tore. By virtue bullt,
It touch'd the skies, and spread o'er shelter'd Ear
An ample roof: by virtue too sustain'd,
And balanc'd 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 crush'd 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
Effus'd the deluge dire of civil blood,
Unceasing woes began, and this, or that,
(Deep-drenching their revenge) nor virtue spard
Nor sex, nor age, nor quality, nor name,
Till Rome, into an human shambles turn'd,
Made deserts lovely.-Oh, to well-earn'd chairs
Devoted race!-If no true Roman then,
No Scævola there was, to raise for me
A vengeful hand: was there no father, robb'd
Of blooming youth to prop his wither'd age!
No son, a witness to his hoary sire

In dust and gore defil'd? 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 deserv'd
The sacred shelter of the laws he spurn'd?
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 resign'd.
And all unhop'd the commonwealth restor'd,
Amaz'd the public, and effac'd his crimes.
Through streets yet streaming from his murderous
Unarm'd he stray'd, unguarded, unassail'd,
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.

hand

Hence, for succeeding years, my troubled reign No certain peace, no spreading prospect, knew. Destruction gather'd round. Still the black soul, Or of a Catiline, or Rullus, swell'd

Pub. Servilius Rullus, tribune of the people, proposed an Agrarian law, in appearance very advantageous for the people, but destructive of their liberty; and which was defeated by the eloquence of Cicero, in his speech against Rullus.

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Select Works of the British Poets: In a Chronological Series from Ben Jonson ...