University of Virginia Library

His rival dead,
He too of race barbaric—Odoacer—
Ah me! How dead? whose hand? I feared to ask!
I would, I would, I ne'er had heard that name!
My Father filled a throne. He stole it not;
Nor styled himself the Emperor of the West:
His race he deemed the noblest of the North:
He strove to blend it with the Roman, strove
In vain, alas, to breathe its manly vigour
Through that dead Empire. Equal laws to both
He gave, the Italian Lands portioned betwixt them.
Dead learning lived again; new letters flourished;
In them he trained me. ‘I,’ thus spake he once,
‘Can rule a host, evoke from nought a kingdom,
Yet scarce can write my name. But thou, my child,
Purer than northern Odin's coldest daughters
Shalt pass in learning Egypt's amorous queen,
(Mark Antony's Fate) in beauty Grecian Helen.’
Then I; ‘for name I choose Antigoné,
Who led her blind old exiled Sire through Greece,
His living staff.’ My Father smiled. Alone
On face so rough can rest a smile so sweet!
That smile went slowly by: again he mused:
‘Thank Heaven, the father dies before the child!
Girl! I have chosen even now thy future husband,
The noblest of our royal race, the Amali:
See that your child and his be fit for rule—
If hot his blood, as mine, he'll need much training—
To him, that child, the crown of Earth shall pass,
My work on Earth completed!’