University of Virginia Library

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.