Poems of Places Oceana 1 V.; England 4; Scotland 3 V: Iceland, Switzerland, Greece, Russia, Asia, 3 America 5, Volume 12

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Page 99 - Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered...
Page 20 - AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones...
Page 150 - He heard it, but he heeded not, — his eyes Were with his heart, 'and that was far away. He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Daci.an mother, — he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday! — All this rushed with his blood. — Shall he expire And unavenged? — Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!
Page 132 - Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, " Now yield thee to our grace." Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see ; Nought spake he to Lars Porsena To Sextus nought spake he ; But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home ; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome. "Oh Tiber! father Tiber! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day!
Page 154 - twere anew, the gaps of centuries ; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making that which was not, till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old ! — The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.
Page 93 - Of nations ; there the Capitol thou seest, Above the rest lifting his stately head On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel Impregnable ; and there mount Palatine, The imperial palace, compass huge, and high The structure, skill of noblest architects, With gilded battlements conspicuous far, Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires...
Page 186 - But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone — with nothing like to thee — Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. Since Zion's desolation, when that He Forsook His former city, what could be, Of earthly structures, in His honour piled, Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.
Page 153 - Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; The trees which grew along the broken arches Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and More near from out the Caesars...
Page 150 - Circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure. — Wherefore not? What matters where we fall to fill the maws Of worms — on battle-plains or listed spot ? Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.
Page 33 - We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced, And soothed by every azure breath, That under heaven is blown, To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own ; Now all the tree-tops lay asleep, Like green waves on the sea.

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