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I DO remember me, that in my youth, | |
| When I was wandering,—upon such a night | |
| I stood within the Coliseum’s wall, | |
| Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; | |
| The trees which grew along the broken arches | 5 |
| Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars | |
| Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar | |
| The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and | |
| More near from out the Cæsar’s palace came | |
| The owl’s long cry, and interruptedly, | 10 |
| Of distant sentinels the fitful song | |
| Begun and died upon the gentle wind. | |
| Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach | |
| Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood | |
| Within a bow-shot. Where the Cæsars dwelt, | 15 |
| And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst | |
| A grove which springs through levelled battlements, | |
| And twines its roots with the imperial hearths, | |
| Ivy usurps the laurel’s place of growth; | |
| But the gladiators’ bloody circus stands, | 20 |
| A noble wreck in ruinous perfection! | |
| While Cæsar’s chambers and the Augustan halls | |
| Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. | |
| And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon | |
| All this, and cast a wide and tender light, | 25 |
| Which softened down the hoar austerity | |
| Of rugged desolation, and filled up, | |
| As ’t were anew, the gaps of centuries; | |
| Leaving that beautiful which still was so, | |
| And making that which was not, till the place | 30 |
| Became religion, and the heart ran o’er | |
| With silent worship of the great of old!— | |
| The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule | |
| Our spirits from their urns. | |
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