In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome![pc]

CXLVII.

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.[515]

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light[516]
What do I gaze on? Nothing--Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight--
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:[pd]
It is not so--I see them full and plain--
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?[pe]

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where _on_ the heart and _from_ the heart we took
Our first and sweetest nurture--when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook[pf]
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives[pg]
Man knows not--when from out its cradled nook
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves--
What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,
The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood