I. PART I.
THE TIME.
I.
It was the fall and evening of a time
In whose large daylight, ere it sank, sublime
And strong, as bulks of brazen gods, that stand,
Bare-bodied, with helm'd head and armèd hand,
All massive monumental thoughts of hers
Rome's mind had mark'd in stately characters
Against the world's horizon. These, at last,
Fading, as darkness deepen'd thro' her vast
Dominion, Rome became mere space, spread forth,
Confused and shapeless, east, west, south, and north;
And, the whole homeless earth thus made her home,
Rome now might nowhere rid herself of Rome.
The heavens were all distemper'd with the breath
Of her old age. She, very nigh to death,
Paced thro' her perishing world in search of air
Unpoison'd by herself; but everywhere,
Like that Greek giant to whose frenzied frame
The blood of his slain foe clung fast as flame,
Withering the mighty limbs he could not free
From their disastrous trophy, so did she,
Choked by her own ensanguined purple, pant.
II.
Rome, in all places earth's inhabitant,
In no place earth's possessor any more,
Was thus by Rome pursued from shore to shore.
And, in that vast and sombre universe
Which was her dying chamber, 'twas Rome's curse
To see the shadows change to substances,
The substances to shadows: and all these
Mock'd her dim eye with their delirious train.
For now, from Power decay'd, in the dull wane
And woeful wasting out of her spent day,
Sick vapours rose that, rolling vague and grey,
Unshaped the face of everything that was.
III.
That severe Senate, once by Cyneas
To gods in synod liken'd, was become
Mere kennel for the curs that cramm'd in Rome
(Rome,—robb'd in turn by Goth, Hun, Vandal, Gaul,
And, having all devour'd, devour'd by all!)
Earth's offal,—the filch'd filth of every land:
Mongrels, they lick'd each new-made master's hand,
Snarling at one another. Gorged with gore,
The purple gluttons of the globe,—no more
They, whose tremendous sires were fain to tug
For savage nurture at the she wolf's dug,
With Mavors march'd, beneath the Bird of Jove,
To scale the shaken walls o' the world. Craft throve,
As courage fail'd. Nor, now, the People rose,
And clamour'd, but the Courtier, plotting close,
Bided his time, and stabb'd. Thus tyrants, dying,
Made room for tyrants: tyranny thus vying
With tyranny: to suit which, slavery
With slavery, and fear with fear, did vie;
While Roman swords, for daggers used, were red
With murder, not with conquest. At the head
Of Rome's worst rabble (ill revering it!)
A new Religion's weird labarum, writ
On Rome's red ensigns by a Faith unknown
To Rome's rude sires, from Tiber, now, to Rhone,
Replaced her Senate's and her People's name:
Claiming whose sanction, in contempt of shame,
Blood-smear'd Brutality with grim Disgrace
Coupled, like dogs, upon the public place.
Slander, the stylus, Treason plied the knife:
And, preaching peace, Religion practised strife.
IV.
Old things had ceased, nor new things yet begun,
To justify their place beneath the sun.
The Future and the Past, contending, wrought
To wreck the Present, for whose faith they fought:
And, in the barbarous bosom of the new,
Grimly the worn-out old world's vices grew.
Some pure Patrician, in whose veins yet ran
The scornful blood of sires Etrurian,
Saw, newly shrined, as, frowning, past he trod,
The Mother of the Galilean God,
And cursed her: some hook-nosed Antiochene,
Whose great-grandfather Paul's first prize had been
Among the Rabbins, on the other side
Passing, beheld stark naked, wanton eyed,
Stout-bodied Venus in her ancient place,
And spat, devoutly brutal, in her face:
Some half-bred Cæsar, waiting for his chance,
Bow'd to both goddesses, and, with a glance
Behind him, pass'd, suspicious, on his way.
V.
Rome, in the main, for her part, like some grey
Bedridden beldam, petulant and weak,
That from her own stout firstborn's sunburnt cheek,
And brawny arm, turns, captious, to caress
The sprawling grandchild on her knees, and bless
With mumbling lip the unswaddled infancy
Whose manhood will not dawn before she die,
Less loved whatever rested of her prime
Than the loud childhood of the later time:
And the new creed, as babes are by the nurse,
Fondled and scolded, and both ways made worse,
Babbling, clench'd baby clutches to destroy
Both sun and moon. An empire was its toy.
Donatus, with fierce fingers dipp'd in gall,
Dragg'd down Cicilien thro' the councils all:
From sultry churches Carthagenian
To convents cold in Arles the echoes ran
Of curses, all pure Christian, in bad Greek:
Cicilien damn'd Donatus. Shriek for shriek,
And stab for stab, with gladiatorial gust,
And, clamorous, scattering cumbrous clouds of dust,
The well-match'd theologic athletes strove,
While Cæsar, smiling, eyed them from above.
Meanwhile, amid the hubbub, unalarm'd,
That “Christian Cicero,” Lactantius, charm'd
Young Crispus; and in smoothest Latin praised
Those Christian virtues on whose work he gazed;
Discomfited the Polytheist sore,
And smote the fall'n Olympians by the score;
Slaughtering, with finely-pointed periods
Of borrow'd Ciceronian, Cicero's gods.
VI.
Then, when Licinius, Rome's last Roman, saw
The gods, his sires had worshipt with grave awe,
By slave, and savage, pimp, buffoon, and priest
Scorn'd and insulted, “Unavenged, at least,
The great gods die not!” groan'd the grey old man.
And, breaking bound from wilds Pannonian,
He, with a remnant rallied to the name
Of Jove the Avenger, cross'd the world, and came,
Camping on Hebrus, to confront the Sign
Of that new Creed proclaimed by Constantine.
