University of Virginia Library

HANNIBAL:

A Poem.

HANNIBAL ON THE ALPS.

“Peace nevermore; but war, eternal war,
'Twixt Romans and the race of Hamilcar!”
Thus, by the altar of his fatherland,
With mystic ceremonial, laying hand
Upon the bleeding victim, sternly swore
The stripling of nine years; and in the core
Of his deep soul he treasures up that oath,
Till one great purpose, growing with his growth,
Absorbs his very being, and the boy
Becomes a man, devoted to destroy
Th' oppressor of his race, and with her name
Wipe out the memory of Punic shame.
Twice nine years more have passed; behold him now
Preparing to redeem that solemn vow,
Collecting all his strength to meet the foe,
And strike the long-premeditated blow:
For Rome will never yield; who fights with her
Must be her victim or her vanquisher.
And he hath manned his fleet and swept the seas,
Through slaughter waded to the Pyrenees,
From Pyrenees to Alps; and nothing stops
The course of the avenger; cliffs, whose tops
Are in the clouds of heaven, he dares to scale:
Easy the task may seem, and dull the tale
To modern tourist's ear, who bravely vaunts
His Alpine feats and pleasant summer jaunts
Through the same region, civilised by time:
For what was dreadful once is now sublime,
Romantic, picturesque, or how besides
You like to phrase it, led by Switzer guides
To sights and scenes that ravish or entrance,
Cloud-reaching roads from Italy and France,
Or where the fur-clad Corsican, the god
Of modern admiration, safely trod
The rugged paths, and dragged his cannon down
St. Bernard slopes, and won a cheap renown.
But honour unto him who first essays
Of peril unexplored the darksome ways.
Well might the Carthaginian at the sight
Of those strange barriers pause; height over height,
Like ramparts raised by nature to repel
Invasion, and the boldest hopes to quell,
Interminable rising; ridge from ridge
Parted by dizzy chasms, that none could bridge
Save the strong-pinioned eagle; jagged steeps,
From which the fiercely-foaming torrent leaps
Or rolls the avalanche. No pastime this,
To march in terror of the huge abyss
That yawns beneath, upon some narrow ledge
Of slippery rock, or on the cataract's edge,
While grisly natives, who defy pursuit,
Hang threatening on the height, and hurl or shoot
Their savage missilery; and then to bear,
Unhoused, unsheltered, all that sky and air
Can pitilessly inflict, the piercing winds,
The hail that buffets, and the mist that blinds;
Roads lost in darkness, or by storms effaced,
Still to be cut and cleared, retrieved, retraced,
For beast and baggage, over deep defiles
And swampy hollows, wrecks of mountain, piles
Of hurricano-driven snow, that freeze
Under a summer-sky. Amidst all these,
Though many a brave one for the wolf and kite
Be left a prey, without a funeral rite,
Without a turf to mark a soldier's grave,
The banners of imperial Carthage wave;
And men are gathered round, of matchless might,
In courage dauntless, terrible in fight;
A semi-barbarous and motley host,
Of many a tribe and tongue, from many a coast;
Faith in their bold commander is the spell
Their union, their devotion, to compel,
Him following, like bloodhounds, in the lure
Of carnage and of rapine: quivered Moor,
And Balearian slinger; sons of Spain,
From Gades and the far Atlantic main
Or Celtiberian hills, in tunics gay
Of snowy-white and scarlet; and th' array
Of subject Libyans, from the broad frontiers
Of Carthage, with their long and glittering spears;
And Punic lords, the blood of ancient Tyre,
With dark and haughty brows and eyes of fire;
The plumy-crested Nomad, and his steed,
Child of the sandy wilderness, whose speed
Shall not avail him here: the elephant
Hath shared his master's toil; with forage scant,
With painful burdens laden, numbed and pinched
With cold and hunger, never hath he flinched
From duty; pattern of the discipline
That trains a soldier: such is Heaven's design,
That muscle, nerve, and strength shall be the tools
Of thought, that safely guides and wisely rules.
See now upon a table-summit spread
Their weather-torn pavilions: night hath fled,
And saffron tints of morning streak the skies;
Thick vapours steaming from the valley rise,
And cliff and crag are wrapt with silvery haze,
Until the sun breaks forth, with sudden blaze
Flooding the mountain tops; the mists unfold
Their snowy wreaths and turn to clouds of gold,
Ascending yet, till with the burning ray
They mingle and are melted into day.
Peaks, precipices, glens, and clefts appear,
And all the Alpine region far and near;
Beneath it and beyond it, far away
As eye could reach, a glorious prospect lay,
Extended like a picture to the view,
More beautiful than artist ever drew,
Or poets of Elysian landscapes feign;
A country formed for a Saturnian reign
Of happiness; not yet with cities crowned,
Or stately towers and battlements, that frowned
On vassal people learning to forget
Their nation and their sires; nor knew it yet
The name of province. The unconquered Celt
In the rude freedom of his fathers dwelt;
No other bulwark than the sword he prized,
And art he understood not or despised;
His tillage, like his life, was rough and plain;
Earth yielded what he asked with little pain.
'Twas Nature of her lavish bounty made
That lovely garden, clothing field and glade
With sweetest verdure, pouring from the hills
The rich abundance of their floods and rills,
Breathing the airs that wake ambrosial spring,
And teach the earth to flower, the bird to sing:
For these are Nature's, God's; the harmony
Of earth with heaven above; the soft blue sky
Seen in the mirror-lake; the dewy lawn
Glistering in the flush of crimson dawn;
Th' unclouded sun, of his meridian march
When he has climbed the zenith, from his arch
Of glory looking down, beheld by men
In brightness only, as to mortal ken
A glimpse of the Creator is revealed
Throughout His glorious works. Were man not steeled
By custom of ill deeds, and thoughts yet worse
Enthralling his degenerate soul, the curse
Of sin primeval, in this garden grove,
In this delicious clime, were scenes to move
High thoughts and holy rapture, that might charm
Barbarian bosoms, and their rage disarm.
Gazing awhile they stood with strange delight
Upon the boundless panorama, bright
With autumn's dædal hues, and wonder mute
Held them, as they surveyed each speck minute
Of life and motion, every field and tree
Visible in the clear transparency,
Green hillocks dotted o'er with nibbling flocks,
And shepherd boy, and ploughman with his ox
Cleaving the fallow glebe, and straying herds,
And twinkling of innumerable birds
That skim along the meads or upward soar,
And lonely fisher paddling with his oar,
Hamlets and rural cots, the homes of toil,
Remote from cares of war and foreign broil.
All in the centre of the valley flows
The king of rivers, fed with Alpine snows,
Eridanus, at first with fond delay
Wooing his banks and winding on his way;
And now the champaign threads, now peeps thro' green
Embowering shades or opening hills between;
Now by Taurinian woods his path is crost,
And in their covert dense the flood is lost;
But soon again he hastens to emerge
With broader channel and with bolder surge,
Swelled by a thousand tributary streams,
His waters dancing in the sunny beams,
Exulting in his strength he rolls along,
The source of plenty and the theme of song.
'Twas Italy! they cried; and quickly ran
From tent to tent the word, from man to man;
And they had gazed their fill, and Hannibal
Stept forth into the midst, and round them all
Triumphantly he looked, and speech that raised
Their highest hopes began: “The gods be praised!
Ye see before your eyes the promised land,
Prize for the valiant heart and conquering hand.
This Italy, the land of corn and oil
And blushing vineyards, ye shall seize and spoil;
Yet not these nearest vales that lie below;
Here dwells no Roman, but the Roman's foe,
Our friend and our ally, the stubborn Gaul,
Whose armies soon shall muster at our call.
Yonder upon your right ye see a sheet
Of glassy splendour, stretching till it meet
The heaven's blue concave; 'tis the Libyan sea,
That once was ours, and ours again shall be,
When Rome hath fallen. Those highlands dark with pine
Are offbreaks of the ridgy Apennine,
The backbone of Italia; thither now
Our march is. South and eastward from the brow
Of that blue mountain pours th' Etrurian flood,
Which the fell Romans drink, the hateful brood
Of ravenous wolves, whom to their lair we'll hunt,
And smite and slay them till our swords are blunt
With slaughter: to the gods we'll give their lives;
But yours shall be their daughters and their wives,
Raiment and jewels, gold and silver hoards,
Delicious wines that sparkle on their boards,
Their horses and their flocks and rich domains,
The plunder of their houses and their fanes,
And stores of armour—all shall be for you;
Only, my comrades, to yourselves be true.
‘Onward’ be still the word! the deeds ye've done
Are earnest of new trophies to be won.
Alps, glaciers, frost, and famine—these are past;
Remains the easiest conquest and the last,
To win this sunny land, and end the sway
Of robber-tribes, whom only slaves obey.
Then come, my comrades, to the plain descend;
There is your guerdon, there your labour's end!”
He said; and martial valour at his words
Was kindled into flame, and shields and swords
Were clashed, and from the dissonant voices broke
A shout of acclamation, that awoke
Echoes on echoes rolling, till it seemed
The mountain's thunder-cry; the eagle screamed,
As if some new Enceladus had blown
His war-blast, the Olympian to dethrone.
Anon, at sound of trumpet, all the camp
Was busy with departure and the stamp
Of mustering files and squadrons; full of hopes,
And with requickened vigour, down the slopes
That overhang Hesperia they commence
Their easier march descending. “What and whence
Be these new-comers?” of each other ask
Cisalpine shepherds, pausing in their task
To gaze upon the mighty stream of war.
No huntsmen of their kindred: from the far
Crest of the mountain to the vale below
Stretches the long battalia, with brave show
Of military splendour; lance and plume
And flaming banners all the path illume:
Th' advancing columns opening into ranks
Halt on the spacious field, and soon, their flanks
On each side deepening, to the view present
Centre and wing and squared regiment
In battailous array. Before the van
Conspicuous rides the lordly African,
Leader of all the host; with earnest gaze
Their number and their order he surveys,
Then looks upon the mountains left behind,
His heart with pride distending, in his mind
Already victor: for what feat were hard
To these the much-enduring, who had warred
With greater power than mortal, had assailed
The fortresses of Nature, and prevailed
Over the very elements? “We come,
Avengers of our wrongs, accursed Rome,
To sweep thee from the earth!” What human force
Can meet the deluge, or resist its course?

INVASION OF ITALY.

Unbar thy temple, Janus; open wide
The sounding portals; let the fiends that bide
Thine awful summons loose, to carry scath
And havoc o'er the earth. Arouse thy wrath,
Bellona; Mars, assert thine ancient reign;
Let not the stranger's foot thy soil profane.
Already the Romulean eagles fly,
To scare the vultures who their power defy:
Rome is abroad in arms: she scorns to wait
Till the insulting foe is at her gate,
But while he lingers yet in doubt or fear,
Her loud alarum breaks upon his ear,
Her battle bristling on the trenched field
Forbids retreat, and he must fight or yield.
And now her flower of knightly equipage
And mail-clad cohorts breathing martial rage
Up from Ligurian vallies fast she pours;
Padus beholds them from his frighted shores;
And sleep'st thou, Hannibal? or wherefore lags
The front of bold invasion? and those flags,
That streamed erewhile so brilliant and so gay,
Flouting the Alpine breezes, where be they?
Hark, hark, upon Ticino's verdant marge
A whirlwind rush of steeds! Charge, Romans, charge;
Around your flanks the fell Numidians swarm;
Upon them, gallants, and disperse the storm!
A Scipio leads you—Scipio—name renowned,
Woful to Carthage, at whose very sound
Hereafter shall the maiden's cheek turn pale,
And orphan boys and widowed mothers wail.
But 'tis not he, of conquered Afric named,
The chivalrous, the virtuous, the unblamed;
Another is it now, who leads the brave
To hasty combat and a dismal grave.
What foul mischance the valiant chief betrays,
His wisdom baffles, or his soul dismays?
Did evil flight of birds his ardour check,
Or did the moping fowl refuse to peck?
Or the Etrurian soothsayer advise
Of angry gods, or stinted sacrifice?
A Scipio turns his back, and turn he must,
His beaten horsemen weltering in the dust,
Saving his noble life to be the prey
Of Spanish vultures on a bloodier day.
Beside Placentia's walls and Trebia's ford
In vain hath rash Sempronius drawn the sword;
Fortune again upon the stranger smiles,
And Roman valour yields to Punic wiles.
Gallia hath shared the glory and the spoil,
And girds her now for longer, mightier toil:
Clan against clan no more will she divide,
Thanks to the star of victory, who shall guide
Her fair-haired children, hungering as of old
For Roman heads, for vengeance, and for gold.
Over the Apennine the war comes down,
And clouds begin to darken with their frown
Hesperia's heaven, that must for many a year
Oppress the land, and make an atmosphere
Of dreariment and gloom, on every face
Leaving and in each heart their ghastly trace.
Sad were the tale of war, if told aright:
In other fashion would the muse indite
Her epic story, than with hackneyed phrase
Of idol-worship, trumpeting the praise
Of him she calls a hero, who can win
Battle or empire, heeding not the sin;
Knew she, as truth's high prophetess, the task
Assigned her, to strip off the idol's mask,
His fabulous disguise, and give mankind
To view the hideous form that lurks behind;
Of trophies we should hear, of triumphs less,
Of horrors more, and crime and godlessness
Afflicting realms and nations: we should read,
How, not the armies, but the people bleed,
Unwounded of the steel, yet stricken sore
In soul and spirit, bleed at every pore
Of that which is most vital. For how sad
For fathers, brothers, sons, when ruffians mad
With beastlike rage and passion hover near
Their sanctuaries, threatening all that's dear
And precious, all they honour and revere:
How piteous for the land, where fiends, whose smile
Is fury, make their lawless domicile,
And round about imperiously stalk,
Defying god or man their will to balk,
Trampling upon her breast with iron heel
And noise of earthquake, while her children reel
In pain and anguish, or like spectres creep
In silence, daring not their curses deep
To mutter, or their scalding tears to weep.
So shall the plague of war Hesperia smite,
Travelling o'er the realm with bane and blight,
Making a beaten road and thoroughfare
Of desolation, laying waste and bare
Her rich-clothed fields and vallies, withering
Her fruitfulness and beauty, poisoning
All sources of delight. The blasted woods
Shall moan unto the hills; the crystal floods
Disturbed, polluted, with an angry swell
Uprising from their fountains, haste to tell
Their sorrows to the sea: her vineyards reft
Of human culture, to the wild-boar left
And wallowing buffalo; her acres clean,
With thistles blotched and overgrowth obscene,
Shall look like fen or moorland; vintager
And husbandman and sturdy forester
To distant scenes removed, to other strife
Than with the woods and glebes, the pruning-knife
And rustic hatchet changed for sword and shield:
And many a ploughman to the furrowed field
That knew his boyish whistle, to the steers,
His patient plodding comrades, must with tears
Bid long adieu; and village maids be sent,
For fear of worse, to dreary banishment,
Far from their pleasant cots, their neat-trimmed lawns,
From old Sylvanus and the neighbour Fauns,
And bounteous Pan, and gentle Nymphs, to whom
The lambs their sleekness owe, the flowers their bloom,
No more to prank them for the lustral wake
At spring's returning prime, nor merry-make
In harvest-season, when the capering swain
Thanks the earth-mother for her golden grain,
When rosy apples strew the orchard-plats,
And the sweet must is foaming in the vats,
And spears are waving decked with ivy-twine,
And masks of Liber swinging from the pine.
These must be memories now, in desert wolds
That screen their sudden flight, or in strongholds
Amid the roar of camps and garrisons,
Where they shall think of dear and absent ones,
Of ancient haunts and dwellings, and contrast
A cheerless present with a blissful past.
The burgher, only safe within the pale
Of walls and ramparts, like a shell-pent snail,
Shall sit in lonely places ill at ease,
Hearing the sound of battle in the breeze;
And often mount his roof or turret high,
Over the region of his fears to spy,
And brakes and bushes warlike shape assume,
And phantom armies in the distance loom:
Perchance he cares not, for he scarce discerns
His friends from foes; or in his heart there burns
Hatred of all that ply the soldier's trade,
And rather he would see in ashes laid
Those walls and all their wide circumference,
Than bear the rude and roistering insolence
Of caitiff hirelings, licensed to obtrude
On him and on his house their presence lewd,
The treasures of his secret cells unhoard,
Or snatch the scanty morsel from his board.
Man's very nature will the time infect,
His outward favour, tongue, and dialect:
Fair courtesy her temper shall unlearn,
And sparkling wit grow dull and taciturn;
And laughter shall forget her merriment,
And envy be no more a malcontent,
But seek for her dark thoughts a new employ,
Rejoicing in the general lack of joy:
And love shall borrow hate's fierce qualities,
Embittering her sweetest sympathies:
Woman her lot of misery will unsex,
To spousal and maternal ties annex
Conditions cruel, curdling in her breast
The milk of kindness: infants uncarest,
Unnoticed, at the mother's foot will mope,
Chid for their prattle and the glistening hope
Seen in their eyes: nor wonder, when the looks
Of husbands and of neighbours are as books
Recording dismal tales, and daily life
Is chronicled by grief, each moment rife
With tidings of disaster, sights and sounds
At which the glad heart sickens, grisly wounds
And images of death, funereal pyres
Shooting into the air their dusky fires
That pale the sunbeam, and unearthly shrieks
Of hireling beldams, sobs and haggard cheeks
Of those that mourn in earnest. Use shall then
Make trite and common to the eyes of men
Things strange and monstrous, hideous and uncouth,
Age furrowing the brow of placid youth,
Striplings, but lately held on nursing laps,
Caparisoned in steel to fill the gaps
Of wasted armies, or keep watch and ward
With slaves and crippled fugitives, to guard
Their trembling Lares and paternal hearth;
A dragon-crop of evil; want and dearth;
Treason, that stabs a friend; domestic feud,
Turning a home to worse than solitude;
Revenge, as she inflicts her scorpion fang,
Herself recoiling at the victim's pang;
Bloodthirsty rage, of greed so ravenous,
Enacting deeds too fell for Tartarus;
Sports of the hangman and the torturer,
Orgies of carnage, infant-massacre:
Dire shall the anguish be, and loud the cries
Of towns and cities to the cruel skies,
Oft as in thunder-wrath the war-clouds sweep
From north to south, from Adria's troubled deep
To Rhegium's rock and blood-stained Syracuse,
More dreadful than when Ætna's floods break loose
Out of her raging womb, and from the wrack
Of smoking villages and fiery track
Of ruin a benighted people fly.
War on the mountains, and no succour nigh!
Can Umbrian hunters check the fierce career
Of Gaulish inroad? on the Nomad spear
Picenian peasants rush? Etruria, what
Of thy proud state remains? hast thou forgot
Ancestral virtue? sleeps it in the urns
Of thy Mæonian kings? Voltumna turns
A mournful look upon the ruined fane,
Where sounded once the patriot's lofty strain,
Now echoing to a foreign chief's harangue,
His cymbals and barbaric trumpet-clang.
Her voice no more the willing muster calls
From Volaterræ and from Clusium's walls;
Swept by Massylian horsemen she must see
Ciminian glades and nymph-loved Fesulæ:
But the Saturnian queen will not forsake
The tombs of Veii aud the Alban lake;
Rome will assist her handmaid; her who gave
Arts, policy, religion, she will save:
A Gallic tumult threatens; in that word
Are centuries of triumph; it hath stirred
Her people's mighty heart; Flaminius, flushed
With youthful glory, lion-like hath rushed
To meet the hunter; lion-like, but blind,
Into the toils he plunges, and shall find
A Caudium there, the goal of his renown.
He nevermore in palmy-broidered gown
Shall mount the car of victory, ne'er again
Up to the seat of Jove with captive train
And bloody spoils and glittering pomp ascend:
Amaze and panic on his march attend;
Avenging Gallia smites him where he weens
To reap victorious bays; in Thrasymene's
Cold valley gashed by many a wound he lies,
And pitying foes perform his obsequies.

CANNÆ.

Woe to the martial race, but not despair:
What folly loses, wisdom can repair:
The stern dictator lifts his awful rods,
With novel rites propitiates the gods,
Fabius, the shield of Rome, whose sheltering power
Sustains his country in her trying hour,
And gains a breathing time, till strength revive
And they that gasp for life for conquest strive.
On for another field! no more delays!
Apulian plains and Samnian uplands blaze,
And locust swarms are eating up the tilth
Of fertile glebes, and riot in the spilth
Of luscious vineyards. But a power's on foot,
Shall find them other welcome, and make boot
Of them and of their gatherings: Latium's realm
Sends forth her myriads, force enough to whelm
All Carthage under sea, (beneath their tread
Shake the Campanian hills), and at their head
The consuls, girded with their country's pride,
Her chosen champions, worthy to decide
The world's great empire. To the field they come,
To see and conquer: the prætorium
Hangs out its bloody challenge to the lists,
Where the opposed camps thro' rising mists
Each by the other dimly are descried,
And men like airy sprites are pouring wide
Over the dusky plain, and trumpets chide
The tardy morn-god clamouring while he parts
The envious clouds, and over Adria darts
His horizontal beams upon the face
Of battle; that soon grows in lessening space
More dreadful, and the field is all aglow
With noise and dust, and speeding to and fro
Of message and command, and marshalling
Of rank and file, and horsemen on the wing,
And trooping of light-armed with dart and sling,
And hawk-eyed archers notching to the string
Their flight of feathered arrows, to prelude
The sterner shock of arms; whose skirmish rude
Affrights the welkin; thick as winter hail
Rattles the stormy shot on plate and mail;
Until the sun-bright standards in advance
Display the ordered squadrons, steed and lance
Panting for onslaught, and the heavy bands
Of infantry, with yet unpurpled hands
Wielding their various implements of death;
The Roman slow of pace, and holding breath,
The savage foe's demeanour to peruse,
The Celt, half-naked in his plaid and trews,
And snowy-frocked Iberian at his side,
With hideous yells approaching, their long stride
Quickening to a run, in moony curve
Pushing their medley war. Now every nerve
And sinew must be strained; front threatens front
No more at distance; in the deadly brunt
Of conflict men with men and steeds with steeds
Are mingling, each and all on valorous deeds
Intent, as it were sport to hack and hew
The limbs of adversaries, and undo
The fairest work of nature. Swings from high
The Gallic broadsword, like the battery
Of some Cyclopian hammer, on the row
Of serried opposites, blow after blow
Redoubling oft and oft, with lightning flash
And terror and intolerable crash
Of helm and shield and cuirass: nor with zeal
Less fiery brandishes his trenchant steel
The shorter-sworded Spaniard, nor less haste
Impels the barbed pilum hot to taste
Barbarian blood: but deeper is the bite
Of the keen gladius plunging in the fight;
And hugest strength and stature are at fault,
Ill-trained and ill-equipt, against th' assault
Of Rome's embattled legions, skilled alike
To cut, to thrust, to parry, and to strike,
For dextrous movement or for bold exploit,
Calm or impetuous, daring or adroit,
In soldier-craft and panoply secure,
That make the battle safe, the victory sure:
Now all too rash, as to an easy prey,
They press into the yielding disarray,
Yielding, yet step by step, against the throng
And weight of numbers labouring to prolong
Unequal fight. Ill fares it with the best
By multitudes and mighty danger prest,
But for a faith that peril can outdare,
Faith in their comrades and their leader's care,
His omnipresent eye and prescient soul
To guide their valour and the field control.
On press those legions; but their wild turmoil
Shall soon be quelled, their headlong rush recoil;
Another foe is nigh; on either wing
The cheers of Carthaginian onset ring;
Pours on their naked flanks the steely rain,
The fire-eyed sons of Libya rush amain
To reap their gory harvest, and, like grass
Under the sweating scythe, the crowded mass
Are dropping fast by weapons once their own;
Not with impunity; an angry groan
Hath burst from Latium's heart, her shifting files
Confront the peril, and amid the piles
Of carnage Punic veins with Roman stream:
Nor burn not Spain and Gallia to redeem
Their battle-ground, encouraged and refresht
At sight of rallying fortune: Rome enmesht
In evil strait—as when a yelling pack
Are gathering with fangs and fierce attack
Around a herd of deer, nor room nor play
Leave for their noble rage—so stands at bay
The baffled strength of Rome, and sees no cure
For sad confusion and discomfiture;
For lo, upon her rear—'twas this made blank
The boldest countenance—from yonder bank,
Where Latium's mounted chivalry have bled
And Aufidus is choked with floating dead,
Victorious Asdrubal, whose hest to-day,
To smite and spare not, none will disobey,
Breaks with his thundering horsemen. As when roll
The chafing waves against a rocky mole,
Built up with strong foundations to defend
Some famous harbour; and awhile they spend
Their shivered strength in vain; yet never cease
Returning and returning with increase
Of noise and anger, till the deep immense
Seems to rise up in her omnipotence
To hurl th' obstruction down, and like a heap
Of loosening sand it falls; the billows leap
Over the crumbling ruin, and with roar
Of exultation burst upon the shore.
Intrepid chiefs and warriors, who contemned
All but your own high thoughts, ye have not stemmed
Misfortune's tide; your rampart of firm breasts
Is pierced and broken, vailed the crimson crests
That towering o'er the field defiance waved;
Your pomp of battle trodden down, outbraved
Your haughty menaces. Too poor, too faint
Are words, the frightful images to paint
Of the lost battle, when the strong and swift
Are swept with weak and wounded in the drift
Of universal ruin, and the base
Linked to the brave in slaughter's foul embrace;
The blood-drunk victor and his reeking blade
Over the dying throw their ghastly shade,
And the last sounds that reach the swooning brain
Are the demoniac shouts that mock his pain.
'Tis done: that host—it seems but yester morn,
Since youth of Latium, high and lowly born,
Patrician and plebeian, one and all
Answering gaily to their country's call,
Flocked to the muster; it was honour's road
And duty's; every maniple o'erflowed
With numbers and with strength; the veriest boor,
That left his goats or swine on cliff or moor,
Had with his helmet donned a soldier's grace,
And strutted to the town with buoyant pace;
Their sacraments of liegeance thro' the crowd
In quick succession were intoned aloud,
And the brave standards soaring to the sky
Became as gods of their idolatry;
Grave fathers sent them forth with prayer and vows,
And ardent maids twined garlands for their brows.
Hope dawned upon their march, and glory shone;
A single blast of war, and they are gone,
Like the brief pageant of a shifting scene,
Passed quite away, as they had never been:
And Hannibal may traverse Cannæ's plain,
And gaze upon the wreck and count the slain,
And note their riven arms and bosoms trenched
With gashes, many clenching, as they clenched
In the last moment of approaching doom,
Their trusty swords, and cheeks where valour's bloom
Is lingering, as death were but a trance,
To animate the marble countenance;
Mark the gay plumes and tunics richly dight,
The stripes and rings of senator and knight,
And where the consul fell, his gallant heart
Playing the soldier's not the leader's part,
Quitting him like a Roman and the heir
Of a time-honoured name: Æmilius there
Rests in his iron sleep; nor consulate
Nor lictors, venomed slander, factious hate,
Nor wrangling tribunes nor comitium's brawl,
Nor sound of Punic trump or shouting Gaul
Shall ever rouse him more. “The hour is come”—
Cries iron-souled Maharbal—“on for Rome!
While she is cowering naked of defence,
Strike, hurl her to perdition! I will hence
This moment with the horse, and follow thou
With thy battalions; in four days from now
We'll sup i'th' Capitol.” Such counsel bold,
Persuading not the chief, hath story scrolled
For sciolist and schoolman to perplex
Their little brains withal; and sure 'twould vex
The shade of the great captain, could he hear
From those grave oracles the truth severe,
How from his side dame fortune he estranged,
Spurning her proffered favour, which had changed
The destiny of nations! Vain and slight
Babblers; who know not, that to mortal sight
Of the dark future is revealed no more,
Than serves a doubtful pathway to explore
From day to day thro' life's entangled maze;
That this is wisdom's office, this her praise,
Promptly and well permitted means to use,
Of chances, possibilities, to choose
What likeliest seems and best; and if she err,
Thereof a higher will is arbiter:
Hers be the counsel, the device, the plan,
The end is God's, unchangeable by man:
Then say we, bold endeavour, strenuous thought,
In honour's catalogue shall pass for nought?
No; still in their desert let faith be strong;
Success or failure makes not right or wrong.
A prophet of no mighty foresight he,
Who teaches of a past futurity,
When ages o'er the issue have revolved
And time itself the mystery hath solved;
And his a crazy lore, that would pretend
The work of ruling providence to mend,
Imaginary destinies to build,
And abrogate the book of fate fulfilled.

ROME.

Who shall describe the agony, the tears,
When Cannæ's tale was shrieked in Roman ears,
As minute after minute posting came
With news of orphaned child and widowed dame,
And blasted hopes and houses desolate?
The aged father groaning under weight
Of anguish, and the mother's louder plaint,
Are soon benumbed and silenced by constraint
Of direr fears, or reckless of relief,
The private sinking in the general grief:
Pity hath lost her office to condole,
When over all alike the sable stole
And melancholy cypress cast their gloom.
Like a dead city, like an empty tomb
Of her lost children, such to outward show
Was Rome in her extremity of woe;
Yet who could look more nearly had beheld
A living soul, an energy unquelled,
Daring the worst of fortune to defy,
And nobly wrestle with calamity.
Oft on a vessel by the tempest tost
Have landsmen looked from shore and deemed her lost,
As she were nothing more than planks and masts
Given to be mockery of the waves and blasts;
But they that made the life of that frail bark
Were still within her, and thro' dangers dark
Saw light and hope and safety. Dauntless thus
In spirit are the sons of Romulus,
Steering the helm of state; the self same breed
As they who to their country's utmost need
Were ne'er found wanting, whether to eject
Proud tyrant or decemvir, and protect
From the invasion of imperious lust
The sanctities committed to their trust
By chaste-eyed Juno; whether to unclasp
The bondsman's chain and loosen usury's grasp,
That squeezes out the life of suffering toil;
Or arts of wily demagogues to foil,
And blustering insurrection overawe,
Wielding the sacred majesty of law;
Still labouring to preserve a nation's charge,
And freedom's bounds with prudence to enlarge,
Yielding of envied privilege whate'er
The many with the few might safely share,
What force would take disdaining to forego,
What justice asked persuaded to bestow.
Such was the race in ancient maxims reared,
Men wise in counsel and in battle feared;
He whom a virtuous poverty made fit
The plough for the dictatorship to quit,
And they who for their country's glory sealed
Their pact with Hades upon Cremera's field:
Crime was it then in duty to be lax,
Sires gave rebellious children to the axe;
The edge of justice sharpest, when offence
The lustre soiled of high preeminence;
For each man to the commonwealth belonged,
And her, himself dishonouring, he wronged.
Illustrious heroes, sacred in their dust!
Stern Brutus and Publicola the just!
Cossi, Camilli, and the Decian clan!
Are they not household names to every man
That calls himself a Roman? Age to age
Their titles of renown, a heritage
Richer than mines of richest gold, bequeaths;
The very air of Rome their virtue breathes;
No spot in the wide city but recalls
Their mighty presence. In her council halls
They sat like gods, commissioned from above
To teach the mandates of eternal Jove;
Their eloquence, in Grecian art unschooled.
The passions of the maddening forum ruled;
Th' applauding shouts that from the Campus rise,
A nation's homage to her good and wise,
Unsought for and uncoveted were theirs;
Fasces and purple robes and curule chairs,
The splendid gauds for which ambition sues,
Were nought but idle pageants to amuse
Or awe the vulgar, did not memories
Of the departed great, whose dignities
They waited on and served, around them flit
In shadowy portraiture, by glory lit,
More life-like than the Parian marble's form
Or tablets with Ionian colours warm,
Showing the heroes of the olden time,
Such as in story and in patriot rhyme
Immortalised they live. The simple lays,
To which the minstrel hath attuned their praise,
Are words of flame, that kindle bard and seer,
The sacrifice exalt, the banquet cheer,
Round the camp-fires and at the cradle sung;
E'en infants from the babbling nurse's tongue
Imbibe the arts that made their fathers great,
And grow in the religion of the state.
Thus nurtured were the peers, whose high debate
An embassy of wretched captives wait,
While mobs with loud impatience and uproar
Besiege their counsels, clamouring to restore
Sons, friends, and kindred, ruder voices blent
With woman's tearful prayer and shrill lament;
For Hannibal is gracious, armistice
And ransom offering, and what terms suffice
For vanquished men. O heavens! among these peers
Are some who can remember—fifty years
Have not effaced the day—upon this floor
The censor Appius—carried to the door
Infirm upon a litter—yet he came
Impatient to unload his grief and shame,
Forbidding ignominious peace uncrowned
By victory: there he stood, and casting round
In impotence his sightless eyeballs—“Peace!
Peace with Tarentum and the slaves of Greece,
Led by a petty tyrant, yet unchased
From our domain, and threatening to lay waste
The fields of Latium! you that would have stript
The east's great conqueror of his plumage, clipt
The eagle wings of Philip's mighty son,
And scourged him o'er the seas to Macedon!
So ye have boasted oft in merry fit
Round the convivial board. And here ye sit,
Tongue-doughty statesmen—oh, had heaven bereaved
My hearing, as my sight, ere thus have grieved
Mine aged ears!—here sit ye, chaffering
For base conditions with an upstart king,
A beggarly Molossian, fugitive
From his rebellious subjects, come to live
By plunder of your coasts. 'Twas not for this
That Manlius hurled from your acropolis
His huge assailants; not for this ye broke
The free-born Samnite, and the Caudine yoke
Twice, thrice avenged, and on your pillars hung
His golden shields. So long will ye have clung
To fortitude and honour, held so fast
Unto the saving anchors of the past,
And from their moorings will ye cast yourselves
Ye know not whither, drifting upon shelves
And quicksands? out of heart for one reverse,
Fault of your general? as could aught worse
Befall you, than the rumour noised abroad,
That whoso lists may pillage and maraud,
And trample on the soil of Italy,
And fright her cities with impunity;
Than insults of the Greeks, in all their ports
And shouting theatres, at shows and sports,
Making the butt of ribaldry and scorn
Who dares confess himself a Roman born?
Peace with Tarentum! never, till she deign
A legion at her cost to entertain,
'Stead of an envoy; till she wash the dirt
Cast on your sacred gown in streams that spurt
Out of her guilty veins! Capitulate!
With Pyrrhus? never may the sun create
So foul a day, our calendar to blot!
No, conscript fathers: rather on the spot
Perish we all, like those old senators
Who gave their breasts to Allia's conquerors!
Of meaner things I speak not: talk who likes
Of castled elephants and bristling pikes:
Arm ye with Roman virtue, and full soon
The staves of the Epirot shall be hewn
In splinters, and the snaky-handed beasts,
Stricken like hunted buffaloes, make feasts
For kites and vultures of the Apennines.”
So the old censor spake, and in long lines
The senators upstood, with loud acclaim
Unanimous for war, and on the name
Of Appius, Appius called, and led him forth
With filial reverence. O priceless worth,
O wondrous power of godlike eloquence!
Not that with honey flow to charm the sense;
Not that where parrot lips are taught to range
O'er themes to which the life and heart are strange,
Or hypocrites pretend for truth to plead,
Whose acts disown her and belie her creed;
But where faith, reason, passion, all conspire
To kindle on the tongue a generous fire,
Whose lightnings pierce their way, whose thunders roll,
To clear the turbid thought and wake the soul!
Such voice the courage of Atilius found,
Yet in the senate's ear his words resound,
And royally in their hearts his memory reigns,
Who stood before them pleading for his chains,
A willing bondsman, freer than the free,
Exampling in himself what Rome should be,
And o'er his captors, when their grace he spurned,
A triumph greater than by victory earned,
Refusing to redeem the forfeiture
Of all that's dearest, choosing to endure
Bonds, exile, torture, rather than degrade
The war-god's sceptre, and make peddling trade
Of that high service and allegiance,
His nation's birthright and inheritance,
That spite of fortune's malice should exalt
The seven-hilled city higher than the vault
Of Jove's own mansion. “Gods! I would abhor
Your very name and race, if glorious war
Ye turned into a traffic and a job
Of sordid huckstering, and did ye rob
The soldier of his pride and noble aim,
To be a partner in his country's fame.
Find me the man who holds his honour cheap,
'Twere better for him in the dust to creep
And grovel as a worm, than gird his loins
To do your drudgery, for paltry coins
Selling his sweat and blood. From service mean
Expect not lofty deeds. Let Carthage lean
On faithless hirelings: ours be to command
True hearts, that battle for their fatherland,
Tempered like hornets when the foe is near,
Rushing on danger, ignorant of fear;
Such, and such only. Shall your ranks be filled
With wretched thralls, who Punic lands have tilled?
Will recreants, who have felt the pinching gyves,
Crouched to the lash and trembled for their lives,
Be brave hereafter, and their fears forget?
Aye, brave as birds that 'scape the fowler's net.
Resign them to their lords, and me to share
The servile doom, who led them into snare.
The chance of battle? then a chance to make
Or mar the player, life or death the stake.
We hazard for the prize, and if we lose,
Then shall we murmur and the gods accuse,
And, while our misadventure we bemoan,
Cast on the state a loss that is our own?
Beshrew the mercy, that could find no place
To hide my head and cover my disgrace,
That to the commonwealth would fain restore
A rank disease, to fester at her core.
Hence with unmanly grief: 'twere heavy cost
For miserable tears, an empire lost.
The angry gods demand me, and I go
A willing victim to the shades below.
Hear my last words, and give them faithful heed:
The blood of my devotion is the seed
Of victory; from my ashes it shall spring,
And shooting into life and flourishing
O'ershadow all the earth. Then, Rome, forgive
Thy hapless son, who dared to overlive
Disaster, only then, when he hath shown
How dying for his crime he can atone.”
Frowning he ended, freezing into stone
Their pity and their tears. So Rome gave up
Her chieftain unredeemed, to drink the cup
Of bitter sorrow; and she mourned for him,
Not with black vestments, but with purpose grim
Of promised vengeance; and she wept, no flood
Raining from watery eyes, but tears of blood
That dyed the ocean: and a monument
She raised unto him, not of stonework, pent
In narrow closure, but one vague and vast
As her own rising greatness, and to last
Unto the end of time. And so forlorn
And abject is she now, that breath of scorn
Finds not instinctive utterance, to rebuke
Submissive counsels, craven thoughts, that brook
To lend them patient ear? Shall Appius,
Shall Regulus, Duilius, Catulus,
Have lived, toiled, suffered, conquered, all in vain?
Better in urns forgotten they had lain,
Than Rome should from her lofty state bow down,
And turn a renegade to her renown.
Amid suspense, while waverers hold aloof,
Of frailty conscious, dreading the reproof,
As trees, before the storm begins to rouse,
Bend neither way, but tremble in their boughs,
Torquatus hath arisen; his flushing cheek,
His flashing eye, the burning thought bespeak,
And half his way into their hearts is made;
And he harangues, and rallies to his aid
What elements survive of true and leal,
The old in creed and faith, the young in zeal:
Whose impulse—'tis the country's—it is she,
Roused like a giant from her lethargy!
Debate is ended; weak or piteous plea
Is put to silence by her stern decree:
“Captives, receive your doom, the doom ye chose,
When, arms in hand, ye gave them to the foes:
Theirs ye became and are, to whom ye sold
Your honour, irredeemable by gold.
And why should we redeem a willing slave?
What profits it a coward's life to save?
Again that on the battle's awful brink
Back on itself his feeble heart may shrink,
His rotten breath upon the camp be shed,
And through our ranks the dire infection spread?
'Tis men uphold the state, (of these good store
The gods have left us, and we ask no more),
Men, whom the braying trumpets more delight
Than lamps of Hymen on their bridal night;
Men, who have hands to fight, not feet to fly,
For none can conquer, save who dare to die.”
Back to thy lord; this arrow from his bow
Hath sped but ill, Sidonian Carthalo;
Back with thy slaves; and say the she-wolf's brood
Thou found'st not in their den in parleying mood,
But he must gather all his hunting gear,
The game that he hath roused will cost him dear
To catch or kill; the chase he hath begun
May gall the hunter, ere the sport be done.
And now from Cannæ's field the plume-pluckt chief
In the humility of manly grief,
Terentius, comes; and him his country's voice
Thankfully hails, and bids him to rejoice,
That he despaired not of the commonweal,
Assured that time her ghastly wounds would heal,
And that her pulse of life too briskly beat
With undistempered blood and godborn heat,
To lay her down and die.

INSURRECTION OF SOUTH ITALY.

Yet not the less
Have signals travelled forth of her distress
On rumour's thousand wings, whose noisy flight
Hath shaken all Hesperia with affright.
The sun of Rome hath suffered foul eclipse,
And in the hearts of men and on their lips
Are ominous forebodings; hopes and fears,
Erewhile but faintly breathed in friendly ears,
Venture to seek an echo, or provoke
Contentious clamour by their raven croak:
Italian burghers wan with public cares
Assemble in their market-halls and squares,
Like frighted sheep, or fowl that in their coops
Huddle together when the falcon stoops;
And each man on his neighbour looks agape,
Fain from his own bewilderment to 'scape,
Till whispered tidings break the dreadful pause,
And cold distrust in earnest converse thaws;
One tells his tale, one colours it anew,
The false or wondrous adding to the true:
Of prodigies they speak by hundreds seen,
Of comets dropping fire but yestere'en,
And raining showers of stone; two suns had dawned
In the disordered sky, and graves had yawned
And yielded up their dead, and oxen lowed
With human voices, murmuring at the goad,
(So by the country folk it was avouched;)
Beasts of the forest in their stables couched,
Two-headed births had scared the littering swine,
And gory juices trickled from the vine;
Th' incensed powers their worship had refused,
Sweat from the statues and the altars oozed,
And fanes were rent by lightning, and the fire
On Vesta's hearth was suffered to expire
In sullen ashes, whether 'twas the maid
Had sunk in slumber and her charge betrayed,
Or she whose breath the mystic embers fed
From the devoted house in anger fled:
And more than one grave elder from the notes
Pencilled upon his boyish memory quotes
A saying of some old Auruncan priest,
Or oracle imported from the east,
Or scroll of Sibyl, prophesying falls
Of empires, tottering thrones, and funerals
Of blazing cities: what can it portend
But to usurping tyranny an end?
So treason mutters, busy with her speech
The secret heart of discontent to reach,
And where the seeds of strife and mischief lurk
There with the venom of her malice work,
While throngs of satellites give noisy vent
Unto the burden of her argument:
A righteous heaven had looked on the opprest,
Their prayers were heard, their wrongs would be redrest;
A fratricidal race, by gods abhorred,
Whose wealth was plunder and whose law the sword,
Now by the sword should perish! Hark, what cries
Thro' Italy resound? The nations rise;
And first the rebel sword Apulia draws,
And boldly links her to the conqueror's cause;
Fierce hordes of Bruttians, like the wolves that prowl
About their shaggy wildernesses, howl
A chant of mutiny; and Samnium rears
The banners of her hardy mountaineers,
Their ancient quarrel once again to try
And wrest from Rome her proud supremacy:
Lucania too shall join her to the Greek,
Their long arrears of enmity to wreak,
And Croton's fickle people shall combine
With Locrian false and feeble Tarentine:
They come with mighty boast, the oft subdued,
Forgetting a long age of servitude,
Arpi, Salapia, Compsa, sworn to tame
The Roman, and uproot the Latin name,
Lessons of loss and chastisement unlearned,
And centuries of olden time returned:
Romans again must meet the battle-shock
On their own ground, upon their native rock,
Visions of might and majesty resign,
Fight for their walls, for ancient Palatine,
For Janus, for Quirinus; e'en as when
The runaways of Alba to their den
And robber-sanctuary were hunted down
By vengeful Tatius; when the infant town
Shook in her hilly cradle with alarms
Of daily foes and din of neighbour arms,
Sabine and Æquian and Etrurian
With pillage and with terror overran
Her tributary field, and petty states
With tyrants in their train besieged her gates,
Or exiled Marcius mocked the Roman sky
With flaunting ensigns of Corioli,
Till infants sued with tears and matrons knelt
To soothe his anger and his pride to melt.

CAPUA.