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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
Sweet as music-strain
Dawned on me then that vision strong and fair
Of Romans true at once to ancient times
And loyal to God's truth. Heroic Houses,
The great patrician races of old Rome,
The Anician, Claudian, Fabian, yea the Scipios',
Before me stood, but consecrate to Christ:
Dead virtues lived again, but in the spirit.
A great thing is Nobility in death:
Those Christian nobles' soul had found a land
Worthier than that for which Attilus died—
God's Church. The hearth had won its rights. True wives
Like Lucrece or like Portia, statelier mothers
Than she whose son captured Corioli
Or she that reared the Gracchi, stood once more
In Christian Rome. Senators oft were Christian
And, garbed in peasant's cloak of homely brown,
Filled with God's poor the palace of their sires:
‘Rome is forgiven!’ I cried; ‘the wrong is past:
The blood that cried for vengeance cries no more:
Maro's old vision of a realm world-wide
Which only smote the proud to raise the weak
Shall find at last fulfilment.’ Woe is me!
I saw but half.
Dawned on me then that vision strong and fair
Of Romans true at once to ancient times
And loyal to God's truth. Heroic Houses,
The great patrician races of old Rome,
The Anician, Claudian, Fabian, yea the Scipios',
Before me stood, but consecrate to Christ:
Dead virtues lived again, but in the spirit.
A great thing is Nobility in death:
Those Christian nobles' soul had found a land
Worthier than that for which Attilus died—
God's Church. The hearth had won its rights. True wives
Like Lucrece or like Portia, statelier mothers
Than she whose son captured Corioli
Or she that reared the Gracchi, stood once more
In Christian Rome. Senators oft were Christian
And, garbed in peasant's cloak of homely brown,
Filled with God's poor the palace of their sires:
‘Rome is forgiven!’ I cried; ‘the wrong is past:
The blood that cried for vengeance cries no more:
Maro's old vision of a realm world-wide
Which only smote the proud to raise the weak
Shall find at last fulfilment.’ Woe is me!
I saw but half.
The many were the bad: the good were few.
Vainly God's Prophets thundered 'gainst the crime,
Fate trod behind it close.
Vainly God's Prophets thundered 'gainst the crime,
178
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |