The lessening prospect, and the mountain blue,
Vanish'd in air; the precipice frown'd, dire;
White, down the rock, the rushing torrent dash'd;
'The sun shone, trembling, o'er the distant main;
The tempest foam'd, immense; the driving storm
Sadden'd the skies, and, from the doubling gloom,
On the scathed oak the ragged lightning fell;
In closing shades, and where the current strays,
With Peace, and Love, and innocence around,
Piped the lone shepherd to his feeding flock :
Round happy parents smiled their younger selves;
And friends conversed, by death divided long.

"To public virtue thus the smiling arts,
Unblemish'd handmaids, served; the Graces they
To dress this fairest Venus. Thus revered,
And placed beyond the reach of sordid care,
The high awarders of immortal fame,
Alone for glory thy great masters strove;
Courted by kings, and by contending states
Assumed the boasted honour of their birth.
"In architecture too thy rank supreme!
That art where most magnificent appears
The little builder man; by thee refined,
And, smiling high, to full perfection brought.
Such thy sure rules, that Goths of every age,
Who scorn'd their aid, have only loaded earth
With labour'd heavy monuments of shame.
Not those gay domes that o'er thy splendid shore
Shot, all proportion, up. First unadorn'd,
And nobly plain, the manly Doric rose;
The Ionic then, with decent matron grace,
Her airy pillar heaved; luxuriant last,
The rich Corinthian spread her wanton wreath.
The whole so measured true, so lessen'd off
By fine proportion, that the marble pile,
Form'd to repel the still or stormy waste
Of rolling ages, light as fabrics look'd
That from the magic wand aërial rise.

"These were the wonders that illumined
Greece,

From end to end"-Here interrupting warm,
"Where are they now? (I cried) say, goddess,
where?

And what the land, thy darling thus of old ?"
"Sunk! (she resumed) deep in the kindred gloom
Of superstition, and of slavery, sunk!

No glory now can touch their hearts, benumb'd
By loose dejected sloth and servile fear:
No science pierce the darkness of their minds;
No nobler art the quick ambitious soul
Of imitation in their breast awake.
E'en to supply the needful arts of life,
Mechanic toil denies the hopeless hand.
Scarce any trace remaining, vestige gray,
Or nodding column on the desert shore,
To point where Corinth, or where Athens stood.
A faithless land of violence, and death!
Where commerce parleys, dubious, on the shore;
And his wild impulse curious search restrains,

Afraid to trust the inhospitable clime.
Neglected nature fails; in sordid want
Sunk and debased, their beauty beams no more.
The sun himself seems, angry, to regard,
Of light unworthy, the degenerate race;
And fires them oft with pestilential rays:
While earth, blue poison steaming on the skies,
Indignant, shakes them from her troubled sides.
But as from man to man, Fate's first decree,
Impartial death the tide of riches rolls,
So states must die and Liberty go round.

Fierce was the stand, ere Virtue, Valour,
Arts,

And the soul fired by me (that often, stung
With thoughts of better times and old renown,
From hydra-tyrants tried to clear the land)
Lay quite extinct in Greece, their works effaced
And gross o'er all unfeeling bondage spread.
Sooner I moved my much reluctant flight,
Poised on the doubtful wing: when Greece with
Greece

Embroil'd in foul contention fought no more
For common glory, and for common weal:
But false to Freedom, sought to quell the free;
Broke the firm band of Peace, and sacred Love,
That lent the whole irrefragable force;
And, as around the partial trophy blush'd,
Prepared the way for total overthrow.

Then to the Persian power, whose pride they
scorn'd,

When Xerxes pour'd his millions o'er the land,
Sparta, by turns, and Athens, vilely sued;
Sued to be venal parricides, to spill

Their country's bravest blood, and on themselves
To turn their matchless, mercenary arms.
Peaceful in Susa, then, sat the Great King;*
And by the trick of treaties, the still waste
Of sly corruption, and barbaric gold,
Effected what his steel could ne'er perform.
Profuse he gave them the luxurious draught,
Inflaming all the land: unbalanced wide
Their tottering states; their wild assemblies ruled,
As the winds turn at every blast the seas:
And by their listed orators, whose breath
Still with a factious storm infested Greece,
Roused them to civil war, or dash'd them down
To sordid peace-Peace!t that, when Sparta
shook

Astonish'd Artaxerxes on his throne,

Gave up, fair-spread o'er Asia's sunny shore,
Their kindred cities to perpetual chains.
What could so base, so infamous a thought
In Spartan hearts inspire? Jealous, they saw

*So the kings of Persia were called by the Greeks.

↑ The peace made by Antalcidas, the Lacedemonian admiral, with the Persians; by which the Lacedemonians aban doned all the Greeks established in the lesser Asia, to the do minion of the King of Persia.

Respiring Athens* rear again her walls:
And the pale fury fired them, once again
To crush this rival city to the dust.
For now no more the noble social soul
Of Liberty my families combined;

But by short views, and selfish passions, broke,
Dire as when friends are rankled into foes,
They mix'd severe, and waged eternal war:
Nor felt they, furious, their exhausted force;
Nor, with false glory, discord, madness blind,
Saw how the blackening storm from Thracia came.
Long years roll'd on,† by many a battle stain'd,
The blush and boast of Fame! where courage, art,
And military glory shone supreme:
But let detesting ages, from the scene

Of Greece self-mangled, turn the sickening eye.
At last, when bleeding from a thousand wounds,
She felt her spirits fail, and in the dust
Her latest heroes, Nicias, Conon, lay,
Agesilaus, and the Theban friends:
The Macedonian vulture mark'd his time,
By the dire scent of Cheronæas lured,
And, fierce descending, seized his hapless prey.
"Thus tame submitted to the victor's yoke
Greece, once the gay, the turbulent, the bold;
For every grace, and muse, and science born;
With arts of War, of Government, elate;
To tyrants dreadful, dreadful to the best;
Whom I myself could scarcely rule: and thus
The Persian fetters, that inthrall'd the mind,
Were turn'd to formal and apparent chains.

"Unless Corruption first deject the pride,
And guardian vigour of the free-born soul,
All crude attempts of violence are vain;
For firm within, and while at heart untouch'd,
Ne'er yet by force was freedom overcome.
But soon as Independence stoops the head,
To Vice enslaved, and vice-created wants;
Then to some foul corrupting hand, whose waste
These heighten'd wants with fatal bounty feeds:
From man to man the slackening ruin runs,
Till the whole state unnerved in Slavery sinks.'

PART III.

ROME

CONTENTS.

Thence

Italy. Transition to Pythagoras and his philosophy, which
he taught through those free states and cities. Amidst the
many small Republics in Italy, Rome the destined seat of Li.
berty. Her establishment there dated from the expulsion of
the Tarquins. How differing from that in Greece. Reference
to a view of the Roman Republic given in the First Part of
this Poem: to mark its Rise and Fall the peculiar purport of
this. During its first ages, the greatest force of Liberty and
Virtue exerted. The source whence derived the Heroic Vir.
tues of the Romans. Enumeration of these Virtues.
their security at home; their glory, success, and empire
abroad. Bounds of the Roman empire geographically de-
scribed. The states of Greece restored to Liberty, by Titus
Quintus Flaminius, the highest instance of public generosity
progress, and completion in the death of Brutus. Rome under
and beneficence. The loss of Liberty in Rome. Its causes,
the emperors. From Rome the Goddess of Liberty goes
among the Northern Nations; where, by infusing into them
her Spirit and general principles, she lays the groundwork of
her future establishments; sends them in vengeance on the
Roman empire, now totally enslaved; and then, with Arts
and Sciences in her train, quits earth during the dark ages.
The celestial regions, to which Liberty retired, not proper to
be opened to the view of mortals.

HERE melting mixed with air the ideal forms
That painted still whate'er the goddess sung.
Then I, impatient.-' From extinguish'd Greece,
To what new region stream'd the Human Day?'
She softly sighing, as when Zephyr leaves,
Resign'd to Boreas, the declining year,
Resumed. Indignant, these last scenes I fled:*
And long ere then, Leucadia's cloudy cliff,
And the Ceraunian hills behind me thrown,
All Latium stood aroused. Ages before,
Great mother of republics! Greece had pour'd,
Swarm after swarm, her ardent youth around.
On Asia, Afric, Sicily, they stoop'd,
But chief on fair Hesperia's winding shore;
Where, from Laciniumt to Etrurian vales,
They roll'd increasing colonies along,
And lent materials for my Roman reign.
With them my spirit spread; and numerous states,
And cities rose, on Grecian models formed;
As its parental policy and arts

Each had imbibed. Besides, to each assign'd
A guardian Genius, o'er the public weal,
Kept an unclosing eye; tried to sustain,
Or more sublime, the soul infused by mo:
And strong the battle rose, with various wave,
Against the tyrant demons of the land.
Thus they their little wars and triumphs knew;

As this part contains a description of the establishment of Their flows of fortune, and receding times, Liberty in Rome, it begins with a view of the Grecian Colo-But almost all below the proud regard nies settled in the southern parts of Italy, which with Sicily Of story vow'd to Rome, on deeds intent constituted the Great Greece of the Ancients. With these co- That truth beyond the flight of Fable bore. lonies, the Spirit of Liberty and of Republics, spreads over 'Not so the Samian sage;‡ to him belongs The brightest witness of recording Fame.

Athens had been dismantled by the Lacedemonians, at

the end of the first Peloponnesian war, and was at this time For these free states his native isles forsook, restored by Conon to its former splendour.

↑ The Peloponnesian war.

Pelopidas and Epaminondas.

The battle of Cheronæa, in which Philip of Macedon ut

terly defeated the Greeks.

The last struggles of Liberty in Greece.

A promontory in Calabria.

↑ Pythagoras

§ Samos, over which then reigned the tyrant Polycrates

And a vain tyrant's transitory smile,
He sought Crotona's pure salubrious air;
And through Great Greece his gentle wisdom
taught;

Wisdom that calm'd for listening years† the mind,
Nor ever heard amid the storm of zeal.

His mental eye first launch'd into the deeps
Of boundless ether; where unnumber'd orbs,
Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky
Unerring roll, and wind their steady way.
There he the full consenting choir beheld;
There first discern'd the secret band of love,
The kind attraction that to central suns

'Already have I given, with flying touch,
A broken view of this my amplest reign.
Now, while its first, last, periods you survey,
Mark how it labouring rose, and rapid fell.
'When Rome, in noon-tide empire grasp'd the
world,

And, soon as her resistless legions shone,
The nations stoop'd around; though then appear'd
Her grandeur most; yet in her dawn of power,
By many a jealous equal people press'd,
Then was the toil, the mighty struggle then;
Then for each Roman I a hero told;
And every passing sun, and Latian scene,

Binds circling earths, and world with world unites. Saw patriot virtues then, and awful deeds,

Instructed thence, he great ideas form'd
Of the whole-moving all-informing God,
The Sun of beings! beaming unconfined
Light, life, and love, and ever active power:
Whom nought can image, and who best approves
The silent worship of the moral heart,

That or surpass the faith of modern times,
Or, if believed, with sacred horror strike.
'For then to prove my most exalted power,
I to the point of full perfection push'd,
To fondness and enthusiastic zeal,
The great, the reigning passion of the free.

That joys in bounteous Heaven, and spreads the That godlike passion! which, the bounds of self joy.

Nor scorn'd the soaring sage to stoop to life,
And bound his season to the sphere of man.
He gave the four yet reigning virtues‡ name;
Inspired the study of the finer arts,
That civilize mankind, and laws devised
Where with enlightened justice mercy mix'd.
He e'en into his tender system, took
Whatever shares the brotherhood of life:
He taught that life's indissoluble flame,
From brute to man, and man to brute again,
For ever shifting, runs the eternal round;
Thence tried against the blood-polluted meal,
And limbs yet quivering with some kindred soul,
To turn the human heart. Delightful truth!
Had he beheld the living chain ascend,
And not a circling form, but rising whole.

'Amid these small republics one arose
On yellow Tiber's bank, almighty Rome,
Fated for me. A nobler spirit warm'd
Her sons; and, roused by tyrants, nobler still
It burn'd in Brutus; the proud Tarquins chased,
With all their crimes; bade radiant eras rise,
And the long honours of the Consul-line.

'Here, from the fairer, not the greater, plan
Of Greece I varied; whose unmixing states,
By the keen soul of emulation pierced,
Long waged alone the bloodless war of arts,
And their best empire gain'd. But to diffuse
O'er men an empire was my purpose now:
To let my martial majesty abroad;
Into the vortex of one state to draw
The whole mix'd force, and liberty, on earth;
To conquer tyrants, and set nations free.

The southern parts of Italy and Sicily, so called because

of the Grecian colonies there settled.

1 His scholars were enjoined silence for five years. The four cardinal virtues.

Divinely bursting, the whole public takes
Into the heart, enlarged, and burning high
With the mix'd ardour of unnumber'd selves;
Of all who safe beneath the voted laws
Of the same parent state, fraternal, live.
From this kind sun of moral nature flow'd
Virtues, that shine the light of humankind,
And, ray'd through story, warm remotest time.
These virtues too, reflected to their source,
Increased its flame. The social charm went

round,

The fair idea, more attractive still,

As more by virtue mark'd; till Romans, all
One band of friends, unconquerable grew,

'Hence, when their country raised her plaintive
voice,

The voice of pleading Nature was not heard;
And in their hearts the fathers throbb'd no more;
Stern to themselves, but gentle to the whole.
Hence sweeten'd Pain, the luxury of toil;
Patience, that baffled fortune's utmost rage;
High-minded Hope, which at the lowest ebb,
When Brennus conquer'd, and when Canna bled,
The bravest impulse felt, and scorn'd despair.
Hence Moderation a new conquest gain'd:
As on the vanquish'd, like descending heaven,
Their dewy mercy dropp'd, the bounty beam'd,
And by the labouring hand were crowns bestow'd.
Fruitful of men, hence hard laborious life,
Which no fatigue can quell, no season pierce.
Hence, Independence, with his little pleased
Serene, and self-sufficient, like a god;
In whom Corruption could not lodge one charm,
While he his honest roots to gold preferr'd;
While truly rich, and by his Sabine field,
The man maintain'd, the Roman's splendour all
Was in the public wealth and glory placed:
Or ready, a rough swain, to guide the plough;

Or else, the purple o'er his shoulder thrown,
In long majestic flow, to rule the state,
With Wisdom's purest eye; or, clad in steel,
To drive the steady battle on the foe.
Hence every passion, e'en the proudest, stoop'd
To common good: Camillus, thy revenge;
Thy glory, Fabius. All submissive hence,
Consuls, Dictators, still resign'd their rule,
The very moment that the laws ordain'd.

Was then kept firm, and with triumphant prow
Rode out the storms. Oft though the native
feuds.

That from the first their constitution shook,
(A latent ruin, growing as it grew,)
Stood on the threatening point of civil war
Ready to rush: yet could the lenient voice
Of wisdom, soothing the tumultuous soul,
Those sons of virtue calm. Their generous hearts

Though Conquest o'er them clapp'd her eagle- Unpetrified by self, so naked lay
wings,

And sensible to Truth, that o'er the rage

Her laurels wreath'd, and yoked her snowy steeds Of giddy faction, by oppression swell'd,

To the triumphal car; soon as expired
The latest hour of sway, taught to submit,
(A harder lesson that than to command)
Into the private Roman sunk the chief.

If Rome was served, and glorious, careless they
By whom. Their country's fame they deem'd
their own;

And above envy, in a rival's train,
Sung the loud lös by themselves deserved.
Hence matchless courage. On Cremera's bank,
Hence fell the Fabii; hence the Decii died;
And Curtius plunged into the flaming gulf.
Hence Regulus the wavering fathers firm'd,
By dreadful counsel never given before;
For Roman honour sued, and his own doom.
Hence he sustain'd to dare a death prepared
By Punic rage. On earth his manly look
Relentless fix'd, he from a last embrace,
By chains polluted, put his wife aside,
His little children climbing for a kiss;
Then dumb through rows of weeping, wondering
friends,

A new illustrious exile! press'd along.

Nor less impatient did he pierce the crowds
Opposing his return, than if, escaped
From long litigious suits, he glad forsook
The noisy town a while and city cloud
To breathe Venafrian, or Tarentine air.
Need I these high particulars recount?
The meanest bosom felt a thirst for fame;

Prevail'd a simple fable, and at once
To peace recover'd the divided state.
But if their often cheated hopes refused
The soothing touch; still, in the love of Rome,
The dread Dictator found a sure resource.
Was she assaulted? was her glory stain'd?
One common quarrel wide inflamed the whole.
Foes in the forum in the field were friends,
By social danger bound; each fond for each,
And for their dearest country all, to die.

'Thus up the hill of empire slow they toil'd: Till, the bold summit gain'd, the thousand states Of proud Italia blended into one;

Then o'er the nations they resistless rush'd,
And touch'd the limits of the failing world.

'Let Fancy's eye the distant lines unite.
See that which borders wild the western main,
Where storms at large resound, and tides im-

mense;

From Caledonia's dim cerulean coast,

And moist Hibernia, to where Atlas, lodged
Amid the restless clouds and leaning heaven,
Hangs o'er the deep that borrows thence its name.
Mark that opposed, where first the springing morn
Her roses sheds, and shakes around her dews:
From the dire deserts by the Caspian laved,
To where the Tigris and Euprates, join'd,
Impetuous tear the Babylonian plain;
And bless'd Arabia aromatic breathes.
See that dividing far the watery north,

Drunk by Batavian meads, to where seven

mouth'd,

Flight their worst death, and shame their only fear. Parent of floods! from the majestic Rhine,
Life had no charms, nor any terrors fate,
When Rome and glory call'd. But, in one view,
Mark the rare boast of these unequal'd times.
Ages revolved unsullied by a crime:
Astrea reign'd, and scarcely needed laws
To bind a race elated with the pride
Of virtue, and disdaining to descend
To meanness, mutual violence. and wrongs.
While war around them raged, in happy Rome
All peaceful smiled, all save the passing clouds
That often hang on Freedom's jealous brow;
And fair unblemish'd centuries elapsed,
When not a Roman bled but in the field.
Their virtue such, that an unbalanced state,
Still between Noble and Plebeian tost,
As flow'd the wave of fluctuating power,

In Euxine waves the flashing Danube roars:
To where the frozen Tanais scarcely stirs
The dead Meotic pool, or the long Rha,*
In the black Scythian seat his torrent throws.
Last, that beneath the burning zone behold:
See where runs, from the deep-loaded plains
Of Mauritania to the Libyan sands,
Where Ammon lifts amid the torrid waste
A verdant isle, with shade and fountain fresh,
And farther to the full Egyptian shore,
To where the Nile from Ethiopian clouds,

The ancient name of the Volga,

t The Caspian Sea.

His never drain'd ethereal urn, descends.
In this vast space what various tongues and states!
What bounding rocks, and mountains, floods, and
seas!

What purple tyrants quell'd, and nations freed!
'O'er Greece, descended chief, with stealth di-
vine,

The Roman bounty in a flood of day:

As at her Isthmian games, a fading pomp!
Her full-assembled youth innumerous swarm'd.
On a tribunal raised, Flaminius sat:
A victor he, from the deep phalanx pierced
Of iron-coated Macedon, and back

The Grecian tyrant* to his bounds repell'd.
In the high thoughtless gaiety of game,
While sport alone their unambitious hearts
Possess'd; the sudden trumpet, sounding hoarse,
Bade silence o'er the bright assembly reign.
Then thus a herald:-" To the states of Greece
The Roman people, unconfined, restore
Their countries, cities, liberties, and laws:
Taxes remit, and garrisons withdraw."
The crowd astonish'd half, and half inform❜d,
Stared dubious round; some question'd, some ex-
claim'd,

(Like one who dreaming, between hope and fear,
Is lost in anxious joy,) 'Be that again,
Be that again proclaim'd, distinct, and loud.'
Loud, and distinct, it was again proclaim'd;
And still as midnight in the rural shade,
When the gale slumbers, they the words devour'd.
A while severe amazement held them mute,
Then bursting broad, the boundless shout to Hea-

ven

From many a thousand hearts ecstatic sprung.
On every hand rebellow'd to their joy
The swelling sea, the rocks, and vocal hills:
Through all her turrets stately Corintht shook;
And, from the void above of shatter'd air,
The flitting bird fell breathless to the ground.
What piercing bliss, how keen a sense of fame,
Did then, Flaminius, reach thy inmost soul!
And with what deep-felt glory didst thou then
Escape the fondness of transported Greece?
Mix'd in a tempest of superior joy,

And is it true? How did we purchase chains?
At what a dire expense of kindred blood?
And are they now dissolved? And scarce one
drop

For the fair first of blessings have we paid?
Courage, and conduct, in the doubtful field,
When rages wide the storm of mingling war,
Are rare indeed; but how to generous ends
To turn success, and conquest, rarer still:
That the great gods and Romans only know.
Lives there on earth, almost to Greece unknown,
A people so magnanimous, to quit
Their native soil, traverse the stormy deep,
And by their blood and treasure, spent for us,
Redeem our states, our liberties, and laws!
There does! there does! Oh saviour, Titus!
Rome!'

Thus through the happy night they pour'd their
souls,

And in my last reflected beams rejoiced.
As when the shepherd, on the mountain-brow,
Sits piping to his flocks and gamesome kids;
Meantime the sun, beneath the green earth sunk,
Slants upward o'er the scene a parting gleam:
Short is the glory that the mountain gilds,
Plays on the glittering flocks, and glads the
swain;

To western worlds irrevocable roll'd,
Rapid, the source of light recalls his ray.'

Here interposing I-'Oh, Queen of men!
Beneath whose sceptre in essential rights
Equal they live; though placed for common good,
Various, or in subjection or command;
And that by common choice: alas! the scene,
With virtue, freedom, and with glory bright,
Streams into blood, and darkens into wo."
Thus she pursued:-" Near this great era, Rome
Began to feel the swift approach of fate,
That now her vitals gain'd: still more and more
Her deep divisions kindling into rage,
And war with chains and desolation charged.
From an unequal balance of her sons
These fierce contentions sprung: and, as increased
This hated inequality, more fierce
They flamed to tumult. Independence fail'd;

They left the sports; like Bacchanals they flew, Here by luxurious wants, by real there;
Each other straining in a strict embrace,

Nor strain'd a slave; and loud acclaims till night
Round the Proconsul's tent repeated rung.
'Then, crown'd with garlands, came the festive
hours;

And music, sparkling wine, and converse warm,
Their raptures waked anew. "Ye gods! (they
cried)

Ye guardian gods of Greece! and are we free?
Was it not madness deem'd the very thought?

The King of Macedonia.

1The Isthmian games were celebrated at Corinth.

And with this virtue every virtue sunk,
As, with the sliding rock, the pile sustain'd.
A last attempt, too late, the Gracchi made,
To fix the flying scale, and poise the state.
On one side swell'd aristocratic pride;
With Usury, the villain! whose fell gripe
Bends by degrees to baseness the free soul:
And Luxury rapacious, cruel, mean,
Mother of vice! While on the other crept
A populace in want, with pleasure fired;
Fit for proscriptions, for the darkest deeds,
As the proud feeder bade; inconstant, blind,
Deserting friends at need, and duped by foes;