igh:
Paternal love and anger in his eye
Beam'd terrible, while in his hand he show'd
Aloft the dagger, tinged with virgin blood,
Which freedom on the maid and Rome at once bestow'd.--
Then the Teutonic dames, a dauntless race,
Who rush'd on death to shun a foe's embrace;--
And Judith chaste and fair, but void of dread,
Who the hot blood of Holofernes shed;--
And that fair Greek who chose a watery grave
Her threaten'd purity unstain'd to save.--
All these and others to the combat flew,
And all combined to wreak the vengeance due
On him, whose haughty hand in days of yore
From clime to clime his conquering standard bore.
Another troop the vestal virgin led,
Who bore along from Tyber's oozy bed
His liquid treasure in a sieve, to show
The falsehood of her base calumnious foe
By wondrous proof.--And there the Sabine queen
With all the matrons of her race was seen,
Renown'd in records old;--and next in fame
Was she, who dauntless met the funeral flame,
Not wrong'd in Love, but to preserve her vows
Immaculate to her Sidonian spouse.
Let others of AEneas' falsehood tell,
How by an unrequited flame she fell;
A nobler, though a self-inflicted doom,
Caused by connubial Love, dismiss'd her to the tomb.--
Picarda next I saw, who vainly tried
To pass her days on Arno's flowery side
In single purity, till force compell'd
The virgin to the marriage bond to yield.
The triumph seem'd at last to reach the shore
Where lofty Baise hears the Tuscan roar.
'Twas on a vernal morn it touch'd the land,
And 'twixt Mount Barbaro that crowns the strand
And old Avernus (once an hallow'd ground);
For the Cumaean sibyl's cell renown'd.
Linterno's sandy bounds it reach'd at last,
Great Scipio's favour'd haunt in ages past;
Famed Africanus, whose victorious blade
The slaughterous deeds of Hannibal repaid,
And to his country's heart a bloody passage made.
Here in a calm retreat his life he spent,
With rural peace and solitude content.
And here the flying rumour sped before,
And magnified the deed from shore to shore.
The pageant, when it reach'd the destined spot,
Seem'd to exceed their utmost reach of thought.
There, all distinguish'd by their deeds of arms,
Excell'd the rest in more than mortal charms.
Nor he, whom oft the steeds of c