 | The white sail and other poems |  |
144
‘RUSSIA UNDER THE CZARS.’
Of thraldom and the accursèd diademIn that vast snow-land, shout the passionate tale;
Touch graybeards in the mart, bid braggarts quail,
And rouse the student lone from his old phlegm
To breathe the self-same sacred air with them,
Spirits supreme, our brothers! whose avail
Is sacrifice. Nay, make no woman's wail:
Rome is re-born! whom kings dare not contemn.
On Neva's shore-streets tho' high blood be spent,
There this lorn world's renascent hopes are meeting:
In camp is Mucius, at the bridge, Horatius;
Regulus walks in gyves, magnificent;
And thence men hear—O sound sublime and gracious!
The unquelled heart of Cæsar's Brutus beating.
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