 | Poems |  |
I.
[O mightiest name of death! O awful Rome!]
O mightiest name of death! O awful Rome!How has he writ in marble on thy hills
His presence! Death thy stony valleys fills;
There, with the ghostly past, he makes his home;
Yet, in the shadows of thy mighty dome,
What life eternal lives, a breath that stills
His boasts to dumbness, and, thy conqueror, kills.
Who breathe thy air, deathless henceforth become;
For ears that hear, thy lips have mystic lore:
To those who question thee in the weird might
Of genius, lo, thy thousand tongues restore
The spells that scare Oblivion to flight.
Greatness is in thy touch. Lo, here, once more
To one thou giv'st thy glory as his right.
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