University of Virginia Library

I.

Evening. At morn the battle. Met at last,
Stood, face to face, the Future and the Past.
Under the wild and sullen hills of Thrace,
Ominous, wrathful, ruin in his face,
On the last day of his own deity
The sun sunk. Mystic lights, from sky to sky,
Shot meteoric thro' the startled stars,
O'er regions named from him that, born of Mars,
First reign'd among those snowy mountain tops,
What time grey Saturn by the sons of Ops
Was, in his turn—as, by himself, had been
Coelus, his sire—dethroned. For Power, not e'en
In Heaven, one hand holds ever. There, while o'er
Rome's antique ensigns, Jove's own Bird once more
Spread his broad wings upon the gloomy air,
The robed Haruspices, with silent care,
Prepared the victim, and asperged the shrine
Mysteriously with sprinkled meal and wine
And frankincense, till all together gleam'd
The altars of the Twelve Great Gods, and stream'd
With fragrant fumes. A shout of pride: a sound
Of shields in closing circle clasht all round
The central camp: where martial cymbals clang'd
Applause, as old Licinius thus harangued
The legions loyal to the gods he loved:

II.

“Romans, whose pride is by your name approved,
The immortal gods, that to your fathers gave
The empire they now call their sons to save,
From yonder altars on those sons look down,
And all Olympus deems our cause its own.
With us the gods to battle go: with us
Whatever rests of Rome yet virtuous,
Yet Roman: all of manhood left on earth,
Of godhood left in Heaven. From every hearth
Where Roman sons revere heroic sires
Our hearts have caught hereditary fires.
Each Roman here, to rescue Rome her laws,
Her gods, her memories, her manhood, draws
The sword Rome gave her children. Friends, our foes
Not us alone, but the great gods, oppose.
False to the faith of their forefathers, they,
To change Rome's laws, and chase her gods away,
Have arm'd Dishonour. Such their cause. Our own
To serve, and save, the old worth, the old renown
Of all that made Rome, Rome. A cause so just
I, with just faith, to the great gods entrust;
Whose cause it is. But if, O friends, in truth,
All we now fight for—all that to our youth
Was sacred, all that to our age is dear,
The greatness of the gods that we revere,
The manful Past that manly minds admire,
The immortal name of Rome's immortal sire,
The urns wherein our fathers' dust is laid,
The shrines they built us, and the laws they made,
Ay, even the banners that they bore in war!
—Were all these things less noble than they are,
Yet, where, in fortune's poorest state, is he,
So poor in spirit, that can endure to see
Foul'd by the rabble on his own hearth floor
The meanest garb that his dead father wore?
Or what man breathes, tho' born of humblest birth,
That hallows not whate'er remains on earth
—Each frailest relic, and each feeblest trace,
His reverent love can rescue from disgrace—
Of her that bore him? Direr monster none,
Since Pyrrha's age, hath prey'd on earth, nor done
More impious deed, than this unfather'd Faith;
Man's memories all unmothering by a breath
Which blights the Present, strikes the godlike Past
Godless, and doth the barren Future blast
Bare of the bright presiding Powers that blest
Our great forefathers, gone to glorious rest;
They in whose names, with pure libations
Full-pour'd, our mothers blest their unborn sons;
Man's fair familiar Presidencies all,
Whose forms made sacred even a foeman's hall!
These, whom we fight for, are the gods that fought
For great Achilles; are the gods that brought
The wise Ulysses to his island home,
And brought from Troy the patriarch sire of Rome.
Them old Homerus, them Virgilius, sung:
Them heroes worshipt: them we know. This young
New-found half-god, Jew-born and bastard both,
Patron of slaves, and Power of upstart growth,
Where was he when Troy burn'd? Enough! We know
Whose cause is ours—Rome's cause! whose foe—Rome's foe!
Whose gods—Rome's gods! In hands, more mighty far
Than ours, the mighty issues of this war
Hang. If we fall, Romans, with us falls all
Romans have lived for. But we cannot fall,
Rome cannot fall, while yet of Rome there be
A score of Romans left to cry with me,
‘Honour to our dead fathers!’”

III.

Proud he spake.
And from that armèd auditory brake
The multitudinous echo of his mind,
In human-hearted thunder, the night wind
Roll'd hoarse above the battle-heapèd ground.