White shine the pillar'd terraces, and long
Bright hosts of gods in many a sculptured throng,
Whose breathless life, in the calm starlight hours,
Casts a chill loveliness upon the flowers-

The thousand-banded flowers that, wide and far,
From the deep beauty of bell, cup, and star,
Their fragrance fling to heaven, though not an air
To kiss the lily's languid lips is there

Even the sweet rose, that leans its tender cheek
Against yon shaft of rare Synnada's stone,
Seems sculptured from the marble's purple streak,
So deep night's dread solemnity is thrown.

V.

Say, to what Spirit's gentlest sway is given
This hour delicious 'neath the lull of heaven?
Steal its pure influences down to steep
The revel-wearied in the bath of sleep-
To waft adoring sounds to beauty's pillow,
And stir with song her bosom's dazzling billow-
Or breathe deep quiet through the lonely room
When the pale sophist, in his reasoning gloom,
Or dreaming lyrist-ah, less happy sage!-
Bends thoughtful o'er the lamp-illumined page?
Heed not, but hasten where the starlight falls,
And burns in gold on yon refulgent walls;
Glance through the Augustan chambers-even there
Where the still myrtles look like spectres in-
And see black Night slip from their wolfish lair
On murderous Power the dogs of Hell and Sin.

VI.

Far down the radiant galleries He came,
Where the soft cresset's duskly-curtain'd flame
Lent the voluptuous loneliness an air,

As Death and Pomp for mastery struggled there.
Onwards he came, and the tall Thracian slave,
That kept the portals with unsheathed glaive,
Stiffen'd with horror, till his glassy eye
That dared not look, froze in perplexity.

He came the Cæsar dread-Earth's awful lord-
The all-tremendous One, whose whisper'd word
Fill'd, like pervading Nature, land and flood; †
And, if but syllabled in wrathful mood,

Had the swift lightning's soundless power to pierce,
Rending and blasting, through the universe!

VII.

Breathe there no splendours from that august brow?
Forth from his presence does no halo glow?
Throng not around glad parasites to bask

In the stray smile their servile faces ask?

The most precious marble of the Romans was that brought from Synnada; it was of a white colour, tinged with a delicate purple.

The arbitrary power of the emperors was as complete as it was despotic. For the victim who incurred their displeasure, "to remain," says Gibbon, "was fatal, and it was impossible to fly; he was encompassed by a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master." "" "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, “remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror."

No!-in that tall attenuated form,*
Lone as some prowling leopard of the storm-
In that pale cheek, and those red restless eyes,
Where the sweet balm of slumber never lies-
In the parch'd lips, cleft by a moaning sound,
And haggard locks, where, twisted wildly round,
Empire's dread fillet clasps his temples broad,
Mark all a Despot needs to mar the works of God.

VIII.

"Bright maids!" the mad Blasphemer mutter'd-“ ye
Who track'd Orestes with such constancy
That his brain burn'd, and reason fled at last
Beneath the spell your beauties round him cast-
Accept my thanks, that, turning from the fane
His ardours rear'd you on Telphusia's plain,†
You now vouchsafe to shake the witchery curl'd
In your fair locks, o'er him who shakes the world!
More faithful than the mortal nymphs whose care
Is still my momentary love to share,

Ye never leave me-morning, fragnant noon,
And night, fierce-glaring with its bloody moon-
That moon that, even when icy winter reigns,
Scorches and dries the current in my veins,
And still will stare upon my aching sight,
Startling the slumber that does not alight:
All constant Three!

-yet if, avenging Jove,
Thy handmaids come commission'd from above
To wreak-as erst upon thy sire-on me,
Earth's thunder-wielder, thy grim jealousy,
I scoff the scourge that only can destroy.
Storm as thou wilt-the dull lethargic joy,
Which the vile slave in Laurion's caverns dim-
Could Cæsar sleep-might boast he shared with him.
Yet hold!—the hour imparts with its deep rest
To this unslumbering, pleasure-craving breast
One stimulating throb-one strong delight
To burst upon the soft patrician's night,
And watch the terror starting through each limb
When summon'd here, 'mid gladiators grim
They stand;-by Orcus! how they seem to feel
The cold keen fury of the griding steel
Already severing life asunder :—yes,
Night even to me is not without its bliss;

And, while one sapient senator remains

To speed my hours with what fools call his pains,
Pale Nemesis may watch her lonely shrine,
Heap'd by no fear-wrung sacrifice of mine-
And choke my thresholds with a shadowy throng,
Each red hand shaking the uplifted thong;
And the Olympus-throned may thunder still
Upon the right of this defying hill:-

"Statura fuit eminenti, pallido colore, corpore enormi, gracilitate maxima cervi. cis et crurum, et oculis et temporibus concavis, fronte lata et torva," &c.-SUETONIUS.

However reluctant the worship offered in them, there were several temples erected to the Furies in Greece; those at Cyrenea and Telphusia in Arcadia were amongst the most distinguished. I am afraid, for the text's sake, that it was the former which Orestes dedicated to those deities who exercised so fatal an influence on his destiny.

Even now I

spurn,"

At once as if the stroke

That in the Alp-storm smites the wasted oak

Had fell'd him there-the god-contemner prone
Dropp'd, like that wild tree from its mountains blown:
And ere the noiseless and attendant crowd

Of slaves, who watch'd behind the Tyrian cloud
That flung its folds, in many a silken fall,
Around the vastness of that gorgeous hall,

Could reach their prostrate lord, a change had cast
Its shadow o'er him-paralysed-and pass'd.

IX.

They raised him, with stunn'd frame and drooping head,
As one scarce rescued from the ghastly dead
They fann'd his forehead, where the fiery will
With some strong agony contended still:
Sudden he shook aside their trembling cares,
And starting forward, as a maniac stares
Upon some shape-how dreadful we but guess
From the rack'd gazer's terrible distress-
Transfix'd he stood; his fear-dilated eye,
Wild with amaze, stretch'd into vacancy,
As though some palpable horror stood between
Him and the placid beauty of the night,
That, through the rose and citron's fragrant screen,
Fill'd all the portal to its Parian height.

Long stood the Cursed-with-empire moveless there,
As marble vow'd by nations to Despair ;

Long seem'd to shudder at some voice, whose tone
Of thunder broke upon his ear alone:

At last the trance gave way in one wild gasp,
And, reeling back, he caught, with feeble clasp,
The nearest column, while shock'd nature's pain
Dropp'd from his forehead like the summer rain ;-
"Ho!-instant, slaves!" at length he falter'd" Fly!
Bid to our sacred presence instantly

That prophet-raver, half a knave-half fool-
Adept in all that yonder starry school
Vouchsafes to teach its students-he who told
The wreath of empire never should enfold
This brow until o'er Baïa's sunny bay-
A liquid path-I urged my war-steed's way;"
Fool-as if winds or waves could-

Ha! again

That awful voice!-tis crushing in my brain!
And thou wilt visit me, Tremendous Power,
Henceforth for ever in the stabber's hour?
'Tis well-thou look'st too dreadful for a God
That kings can bribe, or hecatombs defraud.
So let me dare thee deeply-yes, by Him
Who shakes the sable urn in Hades grim!
Or by an oath more sacred-by the shrine

Thrasyllus, an eminent soothsayer at Rome, in this and several of the preceding reigns, hazarded the prediction alluded to:-"Non magis Caïum imperaturum, quam per Baianum Sinum equis discursurum." To disprove the prediction, Caligula built the bridge from Pozzuoli to Baiæ.

And name of her-Drusilla the Divine!*
As Jove the Cloud-compeller, o'er my head
His judgment thunders ever vainly sped,
So do I shake my tameless spirit free
From all thy funeral threats, mysterious Deity!
Again-why stays the dotard?-soft-he's here-
Thrasyllus, soothsayer, dismiss the fear

That blanches in thy cheek, it mocks the snow
Of thy most reverend tresses' scanty flow.
Approach and mark me-quick-thy laggard foot
Treads onward as reluctantly and mute,

As thou wert bidden to those glorious feasts
Where I and Torture pledge the white-lipp'd guests;
As if the domes that lean in radiant line
Their ponderous gold upon the Palatine
O'erhung thee now, filled with the festal state

I love to fling around the gulf of fate.

Thou start'st, as if thy moon-bewilder'd sight
Saw not this spacious audience-hall aright:
Look round thee, priest, perchance thou'lt dare to say
This is not Naples-that Sarrentum's bay;
And there Misenum's cape, from whence come near,
I saw what none e'er saw but me-what ear
Was cursed not with till now,

THE MIGHTY SEA,

AS LIVE THE IMMORTAL GODS! HAS SPOKEN UNTO ME!

And lifted up its thousand tongues, and shook

All its wide deeps into one stormy look ;

And cast the thunder of its voice's roll,

And aspect's fierceness on both sense and soul.

XI.

"List to the portent.-Scarce an hour is past,
Since, on yon emerald promontory cast,
I look'd along broad ocean's hush'd expanse
Fill'd with the strength of midnight's countenance :
Boundlessly slept the deep; nor sail nor oar
Broke from the far horizon to the shore
The stretch of waves that, lapsing calmly even,
Drank the dark glory of the sapphire heaven;
And far, away afar, Prochyta's isle
Hoarded one hue of day's departed smile,
One flush of rose-light that, I know not why,
Long as it linger'd, fix'd my feverish eye;
At length it faded into night, and then
I faced the giant loneliness again!

I listen'd-'twas the rushing through my heart
Of the hot blood in many a fiery start ;-

I listen'd 'twas the sedges' whispering speech,

Kiss'd by the waters on the silver beach ;

Once more-I dream, or else the sounds that surge
Still louder, break from ocean's circling verge!
'Twas even so-at first a mingling hum,
Like that of nations meeting as they come,
And then a loud hubbub-a sullen roar,
And dash of waves on every sounding shore
And billows rose and rose, without a breeze,
And the stars shrank before the howling seas-

His favourite sister. He caused temples to be erected to her divinity—and upon

all occasions of unusual solemnity he swore by her name.

And mighty clouds came upward from afar,
Like the old giants crowding on to war;
And Heaven was hid, and hurrying voices high,
Calling and answering from the upper sky,

Shook the wild air: At length, when fiercest raged
The strife the waters with stunn'd Nature waged,
At once the whole tremendous Ocean heaved
Up in one wide convulsion!-Earth, relieved,
Reel'd to her centre ;-still the growing sea
Rear'd to the zenith its immensity,

And whirlwinds girt its limbs in stormy crowds,
While from above career'd the thunder-clouds,
And helm'd its shadowy head, as with the gloom
And dreadful tossing of a battle-plume;

And the broad lightnings leap'd about, and pour'd
Their terrors round it like a fiery sword!
-Thou tremblest, slave,-well, Caïus may confess
That he, for one brief moment, did no less:
Upward I strain'd my gaze to meet the brow
Whose glance I felt was burning through me now.
In vain for still the thunder's streamy scowl
Muffled the features with a mighty cowl;

And, though at times the madd'ning winds would sweep
That veil aside, I could not bear the deep
And wrathful face reveal'd and wrapp'd so soon
-Lurid and dim, like an eclipsed moon!
Fatigued I sank; but, mark me, not subdued
By aught that savours of a weaker mood.
Then on my ear a voice, whose accents spoke

With earthquake's hope-destroying loudness, broke ;

At once o'er continent and islands spread

A calm, than even that warring din more dread;

And thus Bis-Ultor Mars! what boots it what was said?
Fierce words that told of some great Spirit still
Claiming ascendance o'er my sceptred will—
Some nameless God, who deem'd the Julian line

Were not so guiltless, not so all-divine

As slaves would hold; denouncements, too, that urge
To madness, lash'd as with a brazen scourge

My soul, and bared the future as the past,
And menaced of an hour, when on the blast
Of glory's heaven, no more our Eagle's wings
Should darken wide earth with their shadowings,
But cower and stoop before the iron hail
That broods even now in some far Polar gale!
-I bore no more-but sprang and faced the sea
With a proud Roman's conscious majesty;
And saw but there the fast-subsiding flood
Through eyes bedimm'd as with a film of blood.

XII.

"And I had still to suffer in the east

The breeze that freshen'd o'er the billow's breast
Dash'd them to foam that, far as night prevails
Gleam'd like the canvass of a thousand sails;
And sails were there, that forward fast and free
As those white billows, bounded countlessly;
Strange spectre ships in many a ghastly fleet
Crowding, and wafting one portentous freight,
Which the rude barks demonstrate came from far
-The Spear's stern merchandsie-barbarian War!