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WHERE stood Salvator, when with all his storms Around him winter rav'd,

When being, none save man, the tempest brav'd? When on her mountain crest

The eagle sank to rest,

Nor dar'd spread out her pennons to the blast: Nor, till the whirlwind passed,

The famish'd wolf around the sheep-cote prowl'd?

Where stood Salvator, when the forest howl'd,
And the rock-rooted pine in all its length
Crash'd, prostrating its strength?

Where stood Salvator, when the summer cloud
At noon-day, to Ausonia direr far

Than winter, and its elemental war,

Gather'd the tempest, from whose ebon shroud,
That cross'd like night a sky of crimson flame,
Stream'd ceaselessly the fire-bolts' forked aim :
While hurricanes, whose wings were frore with hail,
Cut sheer the vines, and o'er the harvest vale
Spread barrenness ? Where was Salvator found,
When all the air a bursting sea became,
Deluging earth?—On Terni's cliff he stood,
The tempest sweeping round.

I see him where the spirit of the storm

His daring votary led:

Firm stands his foot on the rock's topmost head,
That reels above the rushing and the roar
Of deep Vellino.—In the glen below,
Again I view him on the reeling shore,

Where the prone river, after length of course,
Collecting all its force,

An avalanche cataract, whirl'd in thunder o'er

The promontory's height,

Bursts on the rock: while round the mountain brow,

Half, half the flood rebounding in its might,

Spreads wide a sea of foam evanishing in light.

ROME.

I SAW the ages backward roll'd,

The scenes long past restore:

Scenes that Evander bade his guest behold,
When first the Trojan stept on Tyber's shore-
The shepherds in the forum pen their fold;
And the wild herdsman, on his untamed steed,
Goads with prone spear the heifer's foaming speed,
Where Rome, in second infancy, once more
Sleeps in her cradle. But-in that drear waste,
In that rude desert, when the wild goat sprung
From cliff to cliff, and the Tarpeian rock
Lour'd o'er the untended flock,

And eagles on its crest their aërie hung:

And when fierce gales bow'd the high pines, when blaz'd
The lightning, and the savage in the storm

Some unknown godhead heard, and, awe-struck, gaz'd

On Jove's imagin'd form :

And in that desert, when swoln Tyber's wave

Went forth the twins to save,

Their reedy cradle floating on his flood:

While yet the infants on the she-wolf clung,

While yet they fearless play'd her brow beneath,
And mingled with their food

The spirit of her blood,

As o'er them seen to breathe

With fond reverted neck she hung,

And lick'd in turn each babe, and formed with fostering tongue :

And when the founder of imperial Rome

Fix'd on the robber hill, from earth aloof,

His predatory home,

And hung in triumph round his straw-thatched roof

The wolf skin, and huge boar tusks, and the pride

Of branching antlers wide:

And tower'd in giant strength, and sent afar

His voice, that on the mountain echoes roll'd,

Stern preluding the war:

And when the shepherds left their peaceful fold,

And from the wild wood lair, and rocky den,

Round their bold chieftain rush'd strange forms of barbarous

men :

Then might be seen by the presageful eye

The vision of a rising realm unfold,

And temples roof'd with gold.

And in the gloom of that remorseless time,

When Rome the Sabine seiz'd, might be foreseen

In the first triumph of successful crime,

The shadowy arm of one of giant birth

Forging a chain for earth:

And tho' slow ages roll'd their course between,
The form as of a Cæsar, when he led

His war-worn legions on,

Troubling the pastoral stream of peaceful Rubicon.

Such might o'er clay-built Rome have been foretold
By word of human wisdom. But what word,
Save from thy lip, Jehovah's prophet! heard,
When Rome was marble, and her temples gold,

And the globe Cæsar's footstool, who, when Rome
View'd th' incommunicable name divine
Link a Faustina to an Antonine

On their polluted temple; who but thou,
The prophet of the Lord! what word, save thine,
Rome's utter desolation had denounc'd?

Yet, ere that destin'd time,

The love-lute, and the viol, song, and mirth,
Ring from her palace roofs.-Hear'st thou not yet,
Metropolis of earth!

A voice borne back on every passing wind,
Wherever man has birth,

One voice, as from the lip of human kind,
The echo of thy fame ?-Flow they not yet,
As flow'd of yore, down each successive age
The chosen of the world, on pilgrimage,

To commune with thy wrecks, and works sublime,
Where genius dwells enthron'd?-

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Rome! thou art doom'd to perish, and thy days, Like mortal man's, are numbered: number'd all, Ere each fleet hour decays.

Though pride yet haunt thy palaces, though art

Thy sculptur'd marbles animate:

Though thousands, and ten thousands throng thy gate;

Though kings and kingdoms with thy idol mart

Yet traffic, and thy throned priest adore :

Thy second reign shall pass,-pass like thy reign of yore.—

THE GROTTO OF EGERIA.

CAN I forget that beauteous day,
When, shelter'd from the burning beam,
First in thy haunted grot I lay,
And loos'd my spirit to its dream,
Beneath the broken arch, o'erlaid
With ivy, dark with many a braid
That clasp'd its tendrils to retain

The stone its roots had writh'd in twain?

No zephyr on the leaflet play'd,

No bent grass bow'd its slender blade,

The coiled snake lay slumber-bound :
All mute, all motionless around,
Save, livelier, while others slept,
The lizard on the sunbeam leapt,
And louder, while the groves were still,
The unseen cigali, sharp and shrill,
As if their chirp could charm alone
Tir'd noontide with its unison.

Stranger! that roam'st in solitude!
Thou, too, 'mid tangling bushes rude,
Seek in the glen, yon heights between,
A rill more pure than Hippocrene,
That from a sacred fountain fed
The stream that fill'd its marble bed.
Its marble bed long since is gone,
And the stray water struggles on,
Brawling thro' weeds and stones its way.
There, when o'erpower'd at blaze of day,
Nature languishes in light,

Pass within the gloom of night,

Where the cool grot's dark arch o'ershades
Thy temples, and the waving braids

Of many a fragrant brier that weaves

Its blossom thro' the ivy leaves.

Thou, too, beneath that rocky roof,

Where the moss mats its thickest woof,

Shalt hear the gather'd ice-drops fall

Regular, at interval,

Drop after drop, one after one,
Making music on the stone,

While every drop, in slow decay,
Wears the recumbent nymph away.

Thou, too, if ere thy youthful ear
Thrill'd the Latian lay to hear,

Lull'd to slumber in that cave,

Shalt hail the nymph that held the wave;

A goddess, who there deign'd to meet,

A mortal from Rome's regal seat,

And o'er the gushing of her fount,

Mysterious truths divine to earthly ear recount.

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