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| UNDER the slanting light of the yellow sun of October, | |
| A “gang of Dagos” were working close by the side of the car track. | |
| Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian, | |
| Faintly I heard an echo of Rome’s imperial accents, | |
| Broken-down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum, | 5 |
| Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana. | |
| Then came the thought, Why, these are the heirs of the conquering Romans; | |
| These are the sons of the men who founded the Empire of Caesar; | |
| These are they whose fathers carried the conquering eagles | |
| Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule. | 10 |
| The race-type persists unchanged in their eyes and profiles and figures,— | |
| Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling | |
| “Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam.” | |
| See, Labienus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion; | |
| Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Caesar, | 15 |
| Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand; | |
| Further along there stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus; | |
| Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the Censor; | |
| And the next has precisely the bust of Cneius Pompeius. | |
| Blurred and worn the surface, I grant, and the coin is but copper; | 20 |
| Look more closely, you ’ll catch a hint of the old superscription,— | |
| Perhaps the stem of a letter, perhaps a leaf of the laurel. | |
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| On the side of the street, in proud and gloomy seclusion, | |
| “Bossing the job,” stood a Celt, the race enslaved by the legions, | |
| Sold in the market of Rome, to meet the expenses of Caesar. | 25 |
| And as I loitered, the Celt cried, “’Tind to your worruk, ye Dagos,— | |
| Full up yer shovel, Paythro, ye haythen, I ’ll dock yees a quarther.” | |
| This he said to the one who resembled the great Imperator; | |
| Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently digging. | |
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| Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations. | 30 |
| Surely, the ups and downs of this world are past calculation. | |
| How the races troop o’er the stage in endless procession! | |
| Persian, and Arab, and Greek, and Hun, and Roman, and Vandal, | |
| Master the world in turn and then disappear in the darkness, | |
| Leaving a remnant as hewers of wood and drawers of water. | 35 |
| “Possibly,”—this I thought to myself,—“the yoke of the Irish | |
| May in turn be lifted from us in the tenth generation. | |
| Now the Celt is on top,—but time may bring his revenges, | |
| Turning the Fenian down once more to be ‘bossed by a Dago.’” | |
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