University of Virginia Library

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.