their kindled appetites
To marshal them on--were those hoary walls
Mountains, and those who guard them like the gods
Of the old fables, I would trust my Titans;--
But now----

_Phil._ They are but men who war with mortals.

_Bourb._ True: but those walls have girded in great ages,
And sent forth mighty spirits. The past earth
And present phantom of imperious Rome[dk] 190
Is peopled with those warriors; and methinks
They flit along the eternal City's rampart,
And stretch their glorious, gory, shadowy hands,
And beckon me away!

_Phil._ So let them! Wilt thou
Turn back from shadowy menaces of shadows?

_Bourb._ They do not menace me. I could have faced,
Methinks, a Sylla's menace; but they clasp,
And raise, and wring their dim and deathlike hands,
And with their thin aspen faces and fixed eyes
Fascinate mine. Look there!

_Phil._ I look upon 200
A lofty battlement.

_Bourb._ And there!

_Phil._ Not even
A guard in sight; they wisely keep below,
Sheltered by the grey parapet from some
Stray bullet of our lansquenets, who might
Practise in the cool twilight.

_Bourb._ You are blind.

_Phil._ If seeing nothing more than may be seen
Be so.

_Bourb._ A thousand years have manned the walls
With all their heroes,--the last Cato[237] stands
And tears his bowels, rather than survive
The liberty of that I would enslave. 210
And the first Cassar with his triumphs flits
From battlement to battlement.

_Phil._ Then conquer
The walls for which he conquered and be greater!

_Bourb._ True: so I will, or perish.

_Phil._ You can _not_.
In such an enterprise to die is rather
The dawn of an eternal day, than death.
[_Count_ ARNOLD _and_ CAESAR _advance_.

_Caes._ And the mere men--do they, too, sweat beneath
The noon of this same ever-scorching glory?

_Bourb._ Ah!
Welcome the bitter Hunchback! and his master,
The beauty of our host, and brave as beauteous, 220
And generous as lovely. We shall find
Work for you both