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(From Italy)
ONWARD we pass: a vein-like rivulet | |
| Glides gushingly along, whose azure threads | |
| Disparted scarce their emptied channel wet; | |
| Here swelling to a river such as heads | |
| The steed slow wading through its pebbled beds: | 5 |
| Its name hath passed a household word with men, | |
| Moral for him who late or early treads | |
| Life’s fortunate path: who grasps that moment when | |
| The good or ill are offered, ne’er to come again: | |
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| Which leads to sunny happiness, or fame, | 10 |
| But leaves, for aye, in shallows if withstood; | |
| Lo, where yon red banks tell the water’s name, | |
| The Rubicon: and here the arch-rebel stood; | |
| Whose name is ever linked with that wild flood, | |
| Spoiled child of Rome and Fortune, he who chained | 15 |
| Victory to his car: in changeful mood | |
| An ever-varying Proteus, the unreined | |
| Impulse, his law of will, obeyed as fate ordained. | |
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| With an unsettled eye and brow perturbed | |
| He looked on, but saw not the river’s course; | 20 |
| Earth seemed as if she rose and palpably curbed | |
| His passage on: a wail as of remorse | |
| Rose from that stream, her mandate to enforce; | |
| The Roman mother stood before her son: | |
| Life opening flashed on him from its first source, | 25 |
| All or of good or ill, to seek or shun, | |
| The infinite of thought within its limit won. | |
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| Here Cæsar paused, the working influence | |
| Of the stern circumstance that rules us still, | |
| The prescient feeling of the right, the sense | 30 |
| Of conscience stifled but immutable, | |
| Contending impulses of good and ill | |
| Strove here for mastery, the balance hung | |
| By the self-love that doth its fate fulfil: | |
| Strength, faith, hope, confidence behind him clung, | 35 |
| Before, his foe’s cold smile, pride conquered, and he sprung. | |
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| For O, what loves or human memories slaked, | |
| Country, or fame, or gods, the undying thirst | |
| Of feverish ambition once awaked? | |
| Thine was of purer essence, to be first | 40 |
| Thy aim: Rome was not by thy tyranny cursed; | |
| She loved, yet marvelled at thee; and the fear | |
| Of thy dread eagles which by victory nursed, | |
| Came, saw, and conquered, vanished when more near, | |
| For thy unbroken faith taught foemen to revere. | 45 |
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| Thou wert Rome’s sacrifice, her greatest, last; | |
| The throne upreared by thee a lesser took, | |
| Yet fitter, so thy end of life surpassed: | |
| He, wiser, turned the sword into a crook, | |
| But who on thy bald laurelled brow could look, | 50 |
| Nor fear the heights ambition might attain? | |
| Hate struck, the blow for freedom’s he mistook; | |
| But thou didst leave, on thy own altar slain, | |
| A warning to earth’s tyrants rendered not in vain. | |
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| For thou wert stamped by Nature one of those | 55 |
| Whose fiery spirits must ascend or die, | |
| Conquering or falling, aught save life’s repose | |
| Thou couldst endure: thine the sublimity | |
| Of an undying nature, and thy sigh | |
| To be the first, the world’s sole oracle, | 60 |
| Its grand but misdirected energy; | |
| For when thy least wish fortune did fulfil, | |
| What respite gave it thee, thou man of restless will? | |
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| And thou, Ariminum! wert first to hail | |
| The immortal rebel on his march, when sprang | 65 |
| Thy citizens from morning slumbers pale, | |
| As the shrill trumpets through thy forum rang! | |
| The wild shouts of the soldiery, the clang | |
| Of arms: and shielded o’er his legion’s tide, | |
| Cæsar, enthroned, forgot remorse’s pang: | 70 |
| His brow inflamed with mingled wrath and pride, | |
| Rising like War let loose with Até by his side. | |
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| The passionate harangue, the answering wrath, | |
| Wrung from the fierce excitement of the hour: | |
| The cohorts rushing on in their wild path, | 75 |
| Whose rage is reason and whose law is power! | |
| The consciousness of dangers such as lower | |
| O’er him who dares against his country rear | |
| The rebel’s standard, cursed alike his dower, | |
| Failure, or triumph; vengeance, hate, and fear, | 80 |
Passion’s wild elements met in warring chaos here.
END OF VOL. II. | |
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