University of Virginia Library

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.