s how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in Man's, how different were his doom!

LXXXVII.

And thou, dread Statue![466] yet existent in[24.H.]
The austerest form of naked majesty--
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
Folding his robe in dying dignity--
An offering to thine altar from the Queen
Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

LXXXVIII.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome![467][25.H.]
She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
The milk of conquest yet within the dome
Where, as a monument of antique art,
Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart,
Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning--dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX.

Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead--
The men of iron; and the World hath reared
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things[468] they feared,
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
Save one vain Man, who is not in the grave--
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave--[469]

XC.

The fool of false dominion--and a kind
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,[26.H.]
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,[470]
And an immortal instinct which redeemed
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold--
Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
At Cleopatra's feet,--and now himself he beamed,

XCI.

And came--and saw--and conquered![471] But the man
Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,[472]
Which he, in sooth, long le