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| I SAW the ages backward rolled, | |
| The scenes long past restore; | |
| Scenes that Evander bade his guest behold, | |
| When first the Trojan stept on Tiber’s shore,— | |
| The shepherds in the forum pen their fold; | 5 |
| And the wild herdsman, on his untamed steed, | |
| Goads with prone spear the heifer’s foaming speed, | |
| Where Rome, in second infancy, once more | |
| Sleeps in her cradle. But in that drear waste, | |
| In that rude desert, when the wild goat sprung | 10 |
| From cliff to cliff, and the Tarpeian rock | |
| Lowered o’er the untended flock, | |
| And eagles on its crest their aerie hung; | |
| And when fierce gales bowed the high pines, when blazed | |
| The lightning, and the savage in the storm | 15 |
| Some unknown godhead heard, and, awe-struck, gazed | |
| On Jove’s imagined form; | |
| And in that desert, when swoln Tiber’s wave | |
| Went forth the twins to save, | |
| Their reedy cradle floating on his flood; | 20 |
| While yet the infants on the she-wolf clung, | |
| While yet they fearless played her brow beneath, | |
| And mingled with their food | |
| The spirit of her blood, | |
| As o’er them seen to breathe | 25 |
| With fond reverted neck she hung, | |
| And licked in turn each babe, and formed with fostering tongue; | |
| And when the founder of imperial Rome | |
| Fixed on the robber hill, from earth aloof, | |
| His predatory home, | 30 |
| And hung in triumph round his straw-thatched roof | |
| The wolf-skin, and huge boar-tusks, and the pride | |
| Of branching antlers wide, | |
| And towered in giant strength, and sent afar | |
| His voice, that on the mountain echoes rolled, | 35 |
| Stern preluding the war; | |
| And when the shepherds left their peaceful fold, | |
| And from the wild wood lair, and rocky den, | |
| Round their bold chieftain rushed strange forms of barbarous men,— | |
| Then might be seen by the presageful eye | 40 |
| The vision of a rising realm unfold, | |
| And temples roofed with gold. | |
| And in the gloom of that remorseless time, | |
| When Rome the Sabine seized, might be foreseen, | |
| In the first triumph of successful crime, | 45 |
| The shadowy arm of one of giant birth | |
| Forging a chain for earth; | |
| And though slow ages rolled their course between, | |
| The form as of a Cæsar, when he led | |
| His war-worn legions on, | 50 |
| Troubling the pastoral stream of peaceful Rubicon. | |
| Such might o’er clay-built Rome have been foretold | |
| By word of human wisdom. But—what word | |
| Save from thy lip, Jehovah’s prophet! heard, | |
| When Rome was marble, and her temples gold, | 55 |
| And the globe Cæsar’s footstool, who, when Rome | |
| Viewed the incommunicable name divine | |
| Link a Faustina to an Antonine | |
| On their polluted temple,—who but thou, | |
| The prophet of the Lord! what word, save thine, | 60 |
| Rome’s utter desolation had denounced? | |
| Yet, ere that destined time, | |
| The love-lute and the viol, song and mirth, | |
| Ring from her palace roofs. Hear’st thou not yet, | |
| Metropolis of earth! | 65 |
| A voice borne back on every passing wind, | |
| Wherever man has birth,— | |
| One voice, as from the lip of human kind, | |
| The echo of thy fame? Flow they not yet, | |
| As flowed of yore, down each successive age | 70 |
| The chosen of the world, on pilgrimage, | |
| To commune with thy wrecks, and works sublime, | |
| Where genius dwells enthroned? * * * * * | |
| Rome! thou art doomed to perish, and thy days, | |
| Like mortal man’s, are numbered; numbered all, | 75 |
| Ere each fleet hour decays. | |
| Though pride yet haunt thy palaces; though art | |
| Thy sculptured marbles animate; | |
| Though thousands and ten thousands throng thy gate; | |
| Though kings and kingdoms with thy idol mart | 80 |
| Yet traffic, and thy throned priest adore, | |
| Thy second reign shall pass,—pass like thy reign of yore. | |
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