HAMILTON AÏDE.

A ROMAN TOMB.

ONE starlight night, upon the Appian Way
I stood, amongst the tombs of ancient Rome,
The nameless monuments of men who lay
Gathered to their last home.

Mighty in life, haply they here had raised
Stones that should tell, when they were underground,
Of the great names that flatterers had praised,

And Poets' lays had crowned.

Ambition, Pride, all sensual delights

That bind the soul in leaden chains to earth,
Once filled the measure of their days and nights -
What lives to show their worth?

How much to rouse our sympathy and love,
In what is left of those world-famous men,
The conquerors in the field, or they who strove
To conquer with the pen?

What but the stinging verse of satires bought

And sold, to flay a friend with fatal ease?

The cirque, where men were slain by beasts for sport: What monuments but these?

What, in the name of all their gods of stone,
But polished plinths of temples raised to lust,
Triumphal arch or portico o'erthrown?

Dust back again to dust!

In every form, self-worship and self-love;
Passions in marble deified with grace;

The cultured arts, like fruitage, carved above
A quickly-crumbled base.

And herein lies the difference between

The ruin of the things that we behold,

And of the things unseen.

While the rude stones up-built by peasant hands Mark where the shattered cross once held control, The spirit there, Time's cruel scythe withstands, Soul answers still to soul.

But not so here. I said: when through the gloom
(Cold horror seized and held me there, I wist),
Methought the headless Roman on his tomb,
Moved in the moonlight mist.

The arm was slowly raised wherewith he held
His toga's fold; and in the very place

Where the stone head erst stood, I now beheld
A pale, stern Roman face.

Then from those lips, as when a night-wind grows
Among the reeds on Thrasimene's cold lake,
In Latin tongue, a hollow voice arose,

And murmuring hoarsely spake,

'Mortal, now twice ten hundred years are past,
Com'st thou to vex the ashes in my urn,
With all thy vain and shallow wisdom, cast
On the great names that burn

'In the world's temple, like fed-lamps of old?

Let none, presumptuous, dare to quench the light, Because the growing centuries behold

The dawn succeed to night.

'The dawn; not yet the day! The vapors curled
But slowly rise; and ignorance's cloud

Which the All-wise hath laid upon His world,
Doth half mankind enshroud.

'And He whom blindly we adored as Jove,
O thou vain Mortal, was it not His will
That knowledge feebly scales the stair above,
Higher and higher still?

'We found the world barbarian: is it nought,
That where we trod, arts sprang beneath our feet?
The tales of virtue and of valor wrought,

Your children still repeat.

'Who framed just laws, to govern Kings and crafts? Who made the streams from hill to hill to flow?

Through Europe's heart who drove the roads, like shafts
Shot from a mighty bow?

'The fierceness, wolf-imbibed, of all our race,
Made half the world the Roman Eagle's home.
From Greeks, we borrowed poetry and grace,
Our arms belonged to Rome!

'And if the antique virtue ceased to shine,
In days when I had long been out of sight,
Did Rome but share the natural decline
Of all things at their height?

'For peace is kin to luxury: they sank
By slow degrees, those latter men, supine,
Rose-garlanded, inglorious, as they drank
The red Falernian wine.

'Cool from their grottos by the tideless sea, Where mantled round with pine and olive wood, With gardens, baths, and fishponds fair to see,

Their stately villas stood.

'Feasting on Lucrine oysters, or the fruit
Of many a distant sea, while boys in praise
Of love, their voices mingled with the lute,
In soft emasculate lays.

'Not such our lives! We fed, in days of old,
With less refinement, and had rougher games;
Our sterner measures, Saturnine and bold,
Had nobler, worthier aims.

'We sang the God-like hero in his urn;
We crowned the living Victory with bays;

We worshipped Mars; and Justice, blind and stern, Sat in our open ways.

'To prove the public virtues in this life,

Stands not the Edile's tomb unto this hour?

And, as a monument to wedded wife,

Behold Metella's tower!

'The Vineyard, where the Scipios' ashes lie,

And linked with them, that motherhood, whose name,
While Gracchus is remembered, shall not die,
Old Roman worth proclaim.

'And there are memories, greater e’en than these,
Embalmed in History, their graves unknown;

While soon or late, Time's ruthless hand doth seize The perishable stone.

'The stone that mocks for some few hundred years The honored relics, gathered 'neath that tomb,

Raised by a loving hand, with pious tears,

'Such lot is mine. A lucky flight of birds

Presaged my birth: my life was crowned with fame, Men in the forum ever met my words

With reverent acclaim.

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'They made me Praetor: placed on high my bust;
And when forever I had passed away,

The city trailed their garments in the dust,
With covered heads that day.

'They bare my ashes here; the Senate raised

This sculptured marble, which hath long survived
The recollection of the man it praised,

- A memory so short-lived!

Why doth it cumber still the ground?' And here

The hollow voice grew tremulous with scorn.

'To point a moral, obvious and clear,

To ages yet unborn?

'That builded tombs, and all the strong desire
To be remembered after death is vain.
The centres of small systems that expire
With us, our souls sustain

'The conscious loss of all that pride believed
Should keep us living through the future years :
We learn, O Mortal, how we were deceived,
When the hot bitter tears

'Shed by those few whose lives were bound with ours, Or wife's or freedman's (since we only know

In death what depth of root have Love's fair flowers) — When these have ceased to flow,

'Oblivion quickly gathers round our lives:

The spade may strikė some urn that tells of Fame,
But of the struggle of that life survives

Nought save an empty name !

'Our Race is passed away. At dead of night The Master called us; and we did His will. Ye, who through widening avenues of light

Are gathering knowledge still,