Classic Poem

LXXXI

Come sit with me upon this mossy stone,
And as the Forum's wreck we contemplate,
The hero's, sage's, seer's, and patriot's throne,
Rear thou the ruins in their ancient state!
Awake to life, thou canst, the good and great,
Until their shadows walk before our eyes;
Till Cato awes us with his mien sedate;
Till we behold the ardent Tully rise,
Pouring his passion forth that thrilled like prophecies.

LXXXII

Immortal Spirits! animating still
Our life, our quickening impulses of thought,
What are ye? where the will immutable,
The unshaken duty that with fortune fought,
And conquered, wherefore? — to be unforgot.
Say, was this all, stern Cato, didst thou die,
For this, great Tully! was thy mind o'erwrought?
Thy craving spirit could this satisfy,
The limit of thy hope man's immortality?

LXXXIII

Had ye no nobler goal or aim than this,
This, and the self-reward of your great hearts?
Sought ye for this fame's paths of restlessness,
Baring your open breasts to the keen darts
Of hatred, spurning slavery's truckling arts,
Until, o'ertasked, ye sank? — No, from this bier
Of earth upraised, fulfilled your mortal parts,
Ye looked beyond vain annals, for a sphere
Of mightier range than life accorded to ye here.

LXXXIV

Smile not, complacent Sadducee! we stand
To minister a nation's obsequies,
Pilgrims to tombs left on the desert sand;
Records of prescient spirits, whose clear eyes
Looked through time's cloudiest futurities,
These the material fabrics that avowed
Where dwelt the demigods; lo, still they rise,
But where their human dust? what home, what shroud
Hold they dispersed abroad, in wind, flower, wave, or cloud?

LXXXV

They are a part of Nature's loveliness,
The beauty and the life that wakes our own,
Then, while in blessing her, ourselves we bless;
But whither is the informing spirit flown?
Where rests its flight, within what star unknown?
The soul that could not perish in the sod,
The thought that made futurity its throne?
The will, life's fiery ordeal that trod,
The mind through nature's veils that saw the present God?

LXXXVI

Is this wreck all that now remains of thee,
Thou magisterial Forum? — this the place,
Ambition's climbing altar? — can it be
This tree-scathed solitude is all the trace
Where temples, crowded into narrowing space,
Looked, while their stately columns heavenward soared,
As if eternity dwelt in their base;
Where heroes, demagogues, their passions poured,
And the plebeian power ruled, flattered, or implored?

LXXXVII

Here the Past sits a substance, not a shade,
The palpable wrecks around her throne and bier;
We feel her life the conscious air pervade,
A sense of her great prescience breathing near,
While audibly is felt upon the ear
The throbbing pulse of mutability;
The present like a shadow watches here;
The future, child of both, doth prophesy
Changes, that storm-like felt, 'mid folded thunders lie.

LXXXVIII

A solitude within the Forum's heart,
Where meditation may repose; alas,
What here may her profoundest thought impart?
That thou, weak moralist! to dust must pass
With dust beneath; but this chaotic mass
Who shall divide, or portion, or restore?
What light reveal the world beneath that was?
What eye embody forth the forms they wore,
Those giant-fabrics reared as if for evermore?

LXXXIX

Yon arch, is't Jove's or Fortune's? — on that sod
Was the beaked war-denouncing rostrum piled,
Where Tully stood like a descended god?
Where sacrificed the Roman his loved child,
That virgin flower whose soul was undefiled?
Where rose spare Brutus when his friend he slew,
While Freedom on that immolation smiled?
Behold the arch of Titus! — we renew
No more vague wanderings, here reposing on the true.

XC

Material record of the man who left
The one immortal, he who lost a day;
Though rent that arch, the shaft and column cleft,
Well readest thou the moral of decay,
How empires as religions pass away,
Idols renewed, till, waxing old, they fail,
And, falling, manifest their feet of clay;
Think ye the Hebrew, who there graved his tale
Of slavery, deemed his creed should on the earth prevail?