There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday—' All this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

CXLII.

Bat here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;

Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,'

My voice sounds much-and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void-seats crush'd-walls bow'd— And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII.

A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd?
Alas! develop'd, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is near'd: It will not bear the brightness of the day, Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft

away.

CXLIV.

But when the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head ;3 When the light shines serene but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye tread.

CXLV.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; "When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; "And when Rome falls-the World." From our

own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call Ancient; and these three mortal things are still On their foundations, and unalter'd all;

rian shield-bearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor: it must assuredly seem a copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which represented a wounded man dying, who perfectly expressed what there remained of life in him." Montfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The Gladiator was once in the Villa Ludovizi, and was bought by Clement XII. The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo.

1, See Appendix," Historical Notes," Nos. XXIX. XXX. Suetonius informs us that Julius Cæsar was particularly gratified by that decree of the senate which enabled him to Wear a wreath of laurel on all occasions. He was anxious, bot to show that he was the conqueror of the world, but to ble that he was bald. A stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, nor should we without the help of the historian.

This is quoted in the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," as a proof that the Coliseum was entire, when seen by the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims at the end of the seventh, or the beginning of the eighth, century. A notice on the Coliscum may be scen in the "Historical Illustrations,” p. 263. Though plundered of all its brass, except the ring

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, The World, the same wide den-of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime—
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus-spared and bless'd by time;
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes-glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants'
rods

Shiver upon thee-sanctuary and home
Of art and piety-Pantheon!-pride of Rome!

CXLVII.

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! Despoil'd yet perfect, with thy circle spreads A holiness appealing to all heartsTo art a model; and to him who treads Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds Her light through thy sole aperture; to those Who worship, here are altars for their beads; And they who feel for genius may repose Their eyes on honor'd forms, whose busts around them close."

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadow'd on my sight-
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:

It is not so; I see them full and plain—
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:-but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where on the heart and from the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look,

Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leavesWhat may the fruit be yet?-I know not-Cain was Eve's.

which was necessary to preserve the aperture above; though exposed to repeated fires; though sometimes flooded by the river, and always open to the rain, no monument of equal antiquity is so well preserved as this rotundo. It passed with little alteration from the Pagan into the present worship; and so convenient were its niches for the Christian altar, that Michael Angelo, ever studious of ancient beauty, introduced their design as a model in the Catholic church."-Forsyth's Italy, p. 137, 2d edit.

The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of modern great, or, at least, distinguished, men. The flood of light which once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities, now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen. For a notice of the Pantheon, see “Historical Illustrations,” p. 287.

7 This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that adventure, now shown at the church of St. Nicholas in Carcere. The difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are stated in "Historical Illustrations," p. 295.

CL.

But here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift :-it is her sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide

Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt's river:-from that gentle side
Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds
no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the milky way
Has not thy story's purity; it is

A constellation of a sweeter ray,

And sacred Nature triumphs more in this Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss Where sparkle distant worlds:-Oh, holiest nurse! No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.

CLII.

Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear'd on high,'
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity,

Whose travell'd phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doom'd the artist's toils
To build for giants, and for his vain earth,

His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth, [birth! To view the huge design which sprung from such a

CLIII.

But lo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome,2
To which Diana's marvel was a cell-
Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle-

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell
Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd;

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone with nothing like to theeWorthiest of God, the holy and the true. Since Zion's desolation, when that He Forsook his former city, what could be, Of earthly structures, in his honor piled, Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

1 The castle of St. Angelo. "See Historical Illustrations." [This and the six next stanzas have a reference to the church of St. Peter's. For a measurement of the comparative length of this basilica and the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement of St. Peter's, and the Classical Tour through Italy, vol. ii. p. 125, et seq. ch. iv.]

3 ["I remember very well," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "my own disappointment when I first visited the Vatican; but on confessing my feelings to a brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or rather, that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was a great relief to my mind; and, on inquiring further of other students, I found that those persons only who, from natural imbecility, appeared to be incapable of relishing those divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them.-My not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done,

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind, Expanded by the genius of the spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of immortality; and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, See thy God face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

CLVI.

Thou movest-but increasing with the advance, Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows but grows to harmonizeAll musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles-richer painting-shrines where flame The lamps of gold-and haughty dome which vies In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame [claim.

Sits on the firm-set ground-and this the clouds must

CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye-so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

CLVIII.

Not by its fault-but thine: Our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp—and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice

Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great,
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
The fountain of sublimity displays

Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me; I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where the art was in the lowest state it had ever been in, were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel their merit and admire them more than I really did. In a short time, a new taste and a new perception began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of the art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the admiration of the world."]

Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate1 Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung Against their blind omnipotence a weight Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,

CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny; but no,
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a bride and mother-and now there!
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
Is link'd the electric chain of that despair,

Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppress'd

The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears A deep cold settled aspect naught can shake, All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves Shine from a sister valley;-and afar The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, "Arms and the Man," whose reascending star Rose o'er an empire:-but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome ;-and where yon bar Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight."

CLXXV.

But I forget.-My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,-so let it be-
His task and mine alike are nearly done;

Yet once more let us look upon the sea;
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years-
Long, though not very many, since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

1 Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth of a broken heart; Charles V. a hermit; Louis XIV. a bankrupt in means and glory Cromwell of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added, of names equally illustrious and unhappy.

The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation

We have had our reward-and it is here; That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun, And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXVII.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements !-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted-Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

CLXXVIII.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay.

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.

The whole declivity of the Alban hill is of unrivalled beauty, and from the convent on the highest point, which has succeeded to the temple of the Latian Jupiter, the prospect embraces all the objects alluded to in this stanza; the Mediterranean; the whole scene of the latter half of the Eneid, and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber to the headland of Circæum and the Cape of Terracina.-See Appendix, "Historical Notes," No. xxxi.

CLXXXII. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?' Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow— Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me

1[When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the following passage in Boswell's Johnson floating on his rand: Dining one day with General Paoli, and talking of his projected journey to Italy,- A man,' said Johnson, who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above Savages, has come to us from the shores of the MediterraDean The General observed, that The Mediterranean' would be a noble subject for a poem.”—Life of Johnson, vol. v. p. 145, ed. 1835.]

[This passage would, perhaps, be read without emotion, if we did not know that Lord Byron was here describing his actual feelings and habits, and that this was an unaffected picture of his propensities and amusements even from childhood,-when he listened to the roar, and watched the bursts of the northern ocean on the tempestuous shores of Aberdeenshire. It was a fearful and violent change at the age of ten years to be separated from this congenial solitode, this independence so suited to his haughty and contemplative spirit,-this rude grandeur of nature, and thrown among the mere worldly-minded and selfish ferocity, the affected polish and repelling coxcombry, of a great public school. How many thousand times did the moody, sulen, and indignant boy wish himself back to the keen air and boisterous billows that broke lonely upon the simple and soul-invigorating haunts of his childhood! How did he prefer some ghost-story; some tale of second-sight; some relation of Robin Hood's feats; some harrowing narrative of buccaneer-exploits, to all of Horace, and Virgil, and Homer, that was dinned into his repulsive spirit! To the

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done3-my song hath ceased-my theme

Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,-
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me--and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain!

shock of this change is, I suspect, to be traced much of the eccentricity of Lord Byron's future life. This fourth Canto is the fruit of a mind which had stored itself with great care and toil, and had digested with profound reflection and intense vigor what it had learned: the sentiments are not such as lie on the surface, but could only be awakend by long meditation. Whoever reads it, and is not impressed with the many grand virtues as well as gigantic powers of the mind that wrote it, seems to me to afford a proof both of insensibility of heart, and great stupidity of intellect."-SIR E. BRYDGES.]

3["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay,-after teaching us, like him, to sicken over the mutability, and vanity, and emptiness of human greatness, to conduct him and us at last to the borders of the Great Deep.' It is there that we may perceive an image of the awful and unchangeable abyss of eternity, into whose bosom so much has sunk, and all shall one day sink,-of that eternity wherein the scorn and the contempt of man, and the melancholy of great, and the fretting of little minds, shall be at rest forever. No one, but a true poet of man and of nature, would have dared to frame such a termination for such a Pilgrimage. The image of the wanderer may well be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves? It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chriseus· Βῆ δ ̓ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης. -WILSON.