Part 2 — ROME.

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BY R. H. STODDARD.

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In the heart of Rome eternal, the Coliseum stands sublime,

Lofty in the midst of ruins, like a temple built to Time.

Vast, colossal, ’tis with piles of broken arches reared on high,

But the dome is gone, and nothing roofs it but the summer sky.

And the walls are rent, and gaping wide, and crumbling fast away,

And the columns waste, but moss and grasses cover their decay.

When the sky of June was bluest, melting as the eye of love,

And the breezes from Campagnia bore the city’s hum above;

Poring o’er the rich and classic authors of the Age of Gold,

Virgil, Horace, Terence, Plautus, Livy and historians old,

I imagined Rome restored as in the glorious days of yore,

Peopled by the great and mighty, as it shall be nevermore.

I beheld the Past before me, and the fallen circus rose,

And the leaning columns righted, and the ruins seemed to close;

Flags were streaming on the lofty walls, and standards of renown,

Plucked from out some hostile army, or some sacked and burning town;

Proud patricians filled the boxes, judges, senators, in white,

Consuls from remotest provinces, and hosts of ladies bright;

And the emperor sat among them, in his regal purple proud,

And below a countless sea of heads, the common plebeian crowd;

Wrestlers struggled in the ring, and athlete and equestrians bold,

And the steeds and dashing chariots raised a cloud of dusty gold;

Troops of sworded gladiators, Dacian captives, fought and bled,

And the lists were strewn with wretches lying on their bucklers dead;

And in the arena Christian saints and martyrs, old and gray,

Were trampled in the dust, and torn by savage beasts of prey.

Sick of this, I turned and looking out the arches in the street,

I beheld a mighty multitude, a crowd with hurrying feet;

Nobles with their flowing togas, simple artisans bedight

In their holyday attire and badges, maids with eyes of light,

Waving hands to lovers distant, and the little children clung

To their mother’s gowns, and nurses held aloft their infants young,

And afar and pouring through the city gates a long array,

And in front, in his triumphal car, the hero of the day;

And his coursers champed their frosted bits and pranced, but all in vain,

Braced he stood, with streaming robe, and checked them with a tightened rein;

And a mournful group of kingly captives, dusty, drooping low,

Followed, fettered to his chariot, gracing his triumphal show;

Augurs and soothsayers, flamen, tribunes, lictors bearing rods,

And gray-bearded priests, with olive boughs and statues of the gods,

Shaking from their brazen censers clouds of incense to the skies,

Leading lowing steers, in wreaths and garlands decked, to sacrifice.

Sacred nymphs from temples near, in spotless white, and vestal throngs

Followed solemn, dancing mystic dances, singing choral songs.

Cohorts of the Roman soldiers conquering legions marched behind,

With their burnished armor shining and their banners on the wind;

And, with distance faint, the brattling drums, the trumpet’s mighty blast,

And the clarion rung and sounded like an echo from the Past.

All at once the glorious vision melted, faded in the air,

Like a desert exhalation, leaving all its ruin bare.

And, in place of glory and the beauty of the olden day,

I beheld the Queen of Cities wasted, fallen in decay.