By his superior eloquence subdued.
The Marathonian chief, with conquest crown'd,
With Cimon came, for filial love renown'd;
Who chose the dungeon's gloom and galling chain
His captive father's liberty to gain;
Themistocles and Theseus met my eye;
And he that with the first of Rome could vie
In self-denial; yet their native soil,
Insensate to their long illustrious toil,
To each denied the honours of a tomb,
But deathless fame reversed the rigid doom,
And show'd their worth in more conspicuous light
Through the surrounding shades of envious night.
Great Phocion next, who mourn'd an equal fate,
Expell'd and exiled from his parent state;
A foul reward! by party rage decreed,
For acts that well might claim a nobler meed:
There Pyrrhus, with Numidia's king behind,
Ever in faithful league with Rome combined,
The bulwark of his state. Another nigh,
Of Syracuse, I saw, a firm ally
To Italy, like him. But deadly hate,
Repulsive frowns, and love of stern debate,
Hamilcar mark'd, who at a distance stood,
And eyed the friendly pair in hostile mood.
The royal Lydian, with distracted mien,
Just as he 'scaped the vengeful flame, was seen
And Syphax, who deplored an equal doom,
Who paid with life his enmity of Rome;
And Brennus, famed for sacrilegious spoil,
That, overwhelm'd beneath the rocky pile,
Atoned the carnage of his cruel hand,
Join'd the long pageant of the martial band;
Who march'd in foreign or barbarian guise
From every realm and clime beneath the skies
But different far in habit from the rest,
One tribe with reverent awe my heart impress'd:
There he that entertain'd the grand design
To build a temple to the Power Divine;
With him, to whom the oracles of Heaven
The task to raise the sacred pile had given:
The task he soon fulfill'd by Heaven assign'd,--
But let the nobler temple of the mind
To ruin fall, by Love's alluring sway
Seduced from duty's hallow'd path astray;
Then he that on the flaming hill survived
That sight no mortal else beheld, and lived--
The Eternal One, and heard, with awe profound,
That awful voice that shakes the globe around;
With him who check'd the sun in mid career,
And stopp'd the burning wheels that mark the sphere,
(As a well-managed steed his lord obeys,
And at the straiten'