To the Valerian, Fabian, Curian Race,
And others like in fame, created Powers
With attributes from History derived,
By Poesy irradiate, and yet graced,
Through marvellous felicity of skill,
With something more propitious to high aims
Than either, pent within her separate sphere,
Can oft with justice claim.

And not disdaining

Union with those primeval energies

To virtue consecrate, stoop ye from your height, Christian Traditions! at my Spirit's call Descend, and on the brow of ancient Rome,

As she survives in ruin, manifest

Your glories mingled with the brightest hues
Of her memorial halo, fading, fading,

But never to be extinct while Earth endures.
O, come, if undishonored by the prayer,
From all her Sanctuaries! - Open for my feet,
Ye Catacombs, give to mine eyes a glimpse
Of the Devout, as, 'mid your glooms convened
For safety, they of yore enclasped the Cross
On knees that ceased from trembling, or intoned
Their orisons with voices half suppressed,
But sometimes heard, or fancied to be heard,
Even at this hour.

And thou Mamertine prison,

Into that vault receive me from whose depth
Issues, revealed in no presumptuous vision,
Albeit lifting human to divine,

A Saint, the Church's Rock, the mystic Keys

Grasped in his hand; and lo! with upright sword
Prefiguring his own impendent doom,

The Apostle of the Gentiles; both prepared
To suffer pains with heathen scorn and hate
Inflicted; - blessed Men, for so to Heaven
They follow their dear Lord!

Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course,
But many a benefit borne upon his breast
For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,
No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth
An
angry arm that snatches good away,
Never perhaps to reappear. The Stream
Has to our generation brought, and brings
Innumerable gains; yet we, who now
Walk in the light of day, pertain full surely
To a chilled age, most pitiably shut out
From that which is and actuates, by forms,
Abstractions, and by lifeless fact to fact
Minutely linked with diligence uninspired,
Unrectified, unguided, unsustained,

By godlike insight. To this fate is doomed
Science, wide-spread and spreading still as be
Her conquests, in the world of sense made known.
So with the internal mind it fares; and so
With morals, trusting, in contempt or fear
Of vital principle's controlling law,
To her purblind guide, Expediency; and so
Suffers religious faith. Elate with view

Of what is won, we overlook or scorn

The best that should keep pace with it, and must, Else more and more the general mind will droop, Even as if bent on perishing. There lives

No faculty within us which the Soul

Can

spare,

and humblest earthly Weal demands, For dignity not placed beyond her reach, Zealous coöperation of all means

Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.
By gross Utilities enslaved, we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past,
If to the future aught of good must come
Sounder and therefore holier than the ends
Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,
We covet as supreme. O grant the crown

That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff
From Knowledge! - If the Muse, whom I have

served

This day, be mistress of a single pearl
Fit to be placed in that pure diadem,
Then not in vain, under these chestnut-boughs
Reclined, shall I have yielded up my soul
To transports from the secondary founts
Flowing of time and place, and paid to both
Due homage; nor shall fruitlessly have striven,
By love of beauty moved, to enshrine in verse
Accordant meditations, which in times
Vexed and disordered, as our own, may shed
Influence, at least among a scattered few,

To soberness of mind and peace of heart
Friendly; as here to my repose hath been

This flowering broom's dear neighborhood, the light
And murmur issuing from yon pendent flood,
And all the varied landscape. Let us now
Rise, and to-morrow greet magnificent Rome.*

II.

THE PINE OF MONTE MARIO AT ROME.

I SAW far off the dark top of a Pine
Look like a cloud, - a slender stem the tie
That bound it to its native earth, - poised high
'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,
Striving in peace each other to outshine.

But when I learned the Tree was living there,
Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,
O what a gush of tenderness was mine!
The rescued Pine-tree, with its sky so bright
And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,
Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,
Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome

(Then first apparent from the Pincian Height) Crowned with St. Peter's everlasting Dome.+

III.

AT ROME.

Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill?
Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful Rock,
Tarpeian named of yore, and keeping still
That name, a local Phantom proud to mock
The Traveller's expectation? Could our Will
Destroy the ideal Power within, 't were done
Through what men see and touch, slaves wan
dering on,

Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.
Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;
Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,
From that depression raised, to mount on high
With stronger wing, more clearly to discern
Eternal things; and, if need be, defy
Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.

IV.

AT ROME. — REGRETS. IN ALLUSION TO NIEBUHR AND

OTHER MODERN HISTORIANS.

THOSE old credulities, to nature dear,
Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of History, stripped naked as a rock
'Mid a dry desert? What is it we hear?
The glory of Infant Rome must disappear,