What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages! But beneath His fate the moral lurks of destiny; His day of double victory and death Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. LXXXVI. The third of the same moon whose former course Had all but crown'd him, on the self-same day Deposed him gently from his throne of force, And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. And show'd not Fortune thus how fame and sway, And all we deem delightful, and consume Our souls to compass through each arduous way, Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom! LXXXVII. And thou, dread statue! yet existent in Folding his robe in dying dignity, An offering to thine altar from the queen Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene? LXXXVIII. And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart The milk of conquest yet within the dome Where, as a monument of antique art, Thou standest: - Mother of the mighty heart, Which the great founder suck'd from thy wild teat, Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, And thy limbs black'd with lightning-dost thou yet Guard thy immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget? Thou dost; dead LXXXIX. but all thy foster-babes are The men of iron; and the world hath rear'd Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled In imitation of the things they fear'd, And fought and conquer'd, and the sa course steer'd, At apish distance; but as yet none have, Nor could, the same supremacy have near`d Save one vain man, who is not in the grave But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slave slave, XC. The fool of false dominion - - and a kind Of bastard Cæsar, following him of old With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould, With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, And an immortal instinct which redeem'd The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself beam'd, XCI. And came, and saw, and conquer'd. But t man Who would have tamed his eagles down to f Like a train'd falcon, in the Gallic van, Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, With a deaf heart which never seem'd to be A listener to itself, was strangely framed ; With but one weakest weakness — vanity : Coquettish in ambition, still he aim'd — At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claim'd? XCII. And would be all or nothing— nor could wait rears The arch of triumph! and for this the tears And blood of earth flow on as they have flow'd An universal deluge, which appears Without an ark for wretched man's abode, And ebbs but to reflow! - Renew thy rainbow, God! XCIII. What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. XCIV. And thus they plod in sluggish misery, To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. XCV. I speak not of men's creeds - they rest between Man and his Maker — but of things allow'd, The apes of him who humbled once the proud, |