Their spleen by buried crime alone is moved. Great villains thrive-we deem them great indeed, How brave their spirits, wheresoe'er they roved To desolate the world, while millions bleed, Officious fools for aye the cause of bravoes plead.
While Avès vehement confuse their brains,
Kings would be demigods, and courtiers kneel.
Audacious mockery! the Muse refrains
From courting those who ne'er for others feel.
Alas! she cannot scorn the vain appeal
Of steel-clad heroes to her lofty lay;
For them she weaves the laurel-wreath with zeal :
As hirelings stalk along in proud array,
Where blazing lights shed forth an artificial day.
And Genius thus is self-betray'd to please
A heartless tyrant in his pride of power.
The love of flattery is a sore disease;
It spreads from chieftains' hall to ladies' bower;
The worm that gnaws the oak destroys the flower.
Shall sacred poesy, that heavenward springs,
Her flights, to creep before a mortal, lower?
She scorns the song which venal minstrel sings,
Nor to delight the proud her own proud offering brings.
The worshippers of images offend
Against Omnipotence; nor they alone?
Those too, who, mindless of their nature bend
Before a fool or tyrant on a throne!
Such men to scorn their God are ever prone:
Their idols soon are swept away from earth,
In folly riotous, with pride upblown.
What then avail their victories or mirth,
The splendour of their deeds, the lustre of their birth?
"Talche si potè dire Alboino vinse l' Italia, et una Femina vinse Alboino."-Del Regno d'Italia Epitome.
"He would despise me as a thing that bears
Insult with patience, or dissolves in tears:
A better lesson to his sex I'll teach ;
The cruel madman is within my reach.
Revenge is mine; that passion ill supprest
Rages with quicken'd fury in my breast!
Were there no mountebanks to furnish sport
For all the savages who crowd his court,
But I must be selected to delight
Their vaunting spirits-forced to such a sight?-
Yet it unnerves me not; my father's will
Is done, and hatred stifles sense of ill.
This pleasant triumph too may sadly end;
Trust not, fool-hardy prince, the seeming friend!
Thy wife is but thy slave, untrue to thee,
Her person is encaged, her heart is free;
For the story to which this fragment relates, see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Quarto edit. vol. iv. page 430.
Or if not free, another doth possess
That, which thee, parricide, can never bless.
Not always he who braves in various shapes
Death undisguised his secret snare escapes.
Thy Lombard chiefs shall not protect thee now,
A woman's weak revenge will give the blow.
Thus self-absolved from crime, let others prate,
I'll urge my gentle paramour to hate
That royal monster whose untender zeal
Has forced my soul this agony to feel."
Thus spoke the lofty dame, while passions strove
Within for mastery-hate, vengeance, love.
Hate of her cruel lord, revenge on him
Who tore her very heart to please his whim.
Another passion rose, as bad indeed,
Yet such as cheer'd her at her utmost need.
The slayer of her kindred forced to wed,
Dragg'd like a victim to the nuptial bed,
Marriage to her no morning-star appear'd:
Its imaged brightness once her hopes had cheer'd:
Why marvel that her feelings went astray,
When thus was undermined their only stay?
"When the uncorrupted part of the senate had, by the death of Cæsar, made one great effort to restore their former state and liberty, the success did not answer their hopes; but that whole assembly was so sunk in its authority, that those patriots were forced to fly and give way to the madness of the people, who, by their own disposition, stirred up with the harangues of their orators, were now wholly bent upon single and despotic slavery."-SWIFT.
WHEN Liberty, triumphing over her foes,
Re-breath'd, though affrighted at Italy's woes,
The sword of her Brutus was redden'd in vain :
He broke, yet the Romans refasten'd, the chain.
For tyranny's woe-trumpet, near and afar,
Bade the legions of servitude rush to the war.
He, the last of the Romans, by Fortune disown'd,
(That goddess the brows of an Antony crown'd)
Saw Freedom dishonour'd by those whom she loved,
Saw the charms of mock-glory by thousands approved.
All proud of a master, none conscious of shame;
Religion unheeded, and virtue a name.*
The genius of Rome had aroused him too late-
Overborne by the torrent, he yielded to fate.
* See an admirable defence of the exclamation of Brutus in his dying moments, in the Dictionnaire de Bayle, article "Brutus," tome i. page 677.
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