 | Julia Alpinula |  |
V.
All, all is changed! age, manhood, youth,The soul of honour, lip of truth;
The manners of the ages past,
Simple, severe, confiding, chaste,
Are told, if told of, with a sneer,
Fit only for a Cato's ear;
The matron-shade, in which of yore
Volumnia charmed, Cornelia grew,
Whom Romans loved, who Romans bore,
Is fled—almost forgotten too.
To sun themselves in public view,
Is now the pride of Beauty's daughters,
9
To chide in their capricious wrath,
The slaves who gather from the waters,
And lightly braid with delicate care,
The flow of their redundant air.
In sweeping vestures they depart,
So gently discomposed by art,
That it may seem the wind's delight
To give the embroidered hues to sight;
And when in summer they forsake
Their villas by the Lucrine lake,
And seek the blue, delicious sky
Of Capri or Puteoli,
In galleys, golden at the prows,
On Syrian couches they recline,
The fan of cedar cools their brows,
And roses blush round cups of wine,
While instruments of silver sound
Make glad the waters, dancing round.
Discord dethrones, and household wrath,
The chaste Penates of the hearth.
The charities of kindred fly
Like old Astrea to the sky.
By home-bred faction, slave or son,
Each high-born Lady is undone;
10
On them have wreaked a harsher fate,
And they whom no accusing foe
Impleads, have friends to deal the blow.
| Julia Alpinula | |