Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,

Lit by the wan light of the hornéd moon,

The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

But stay! these walls, these ivy-clad arcades, These mouldering plinths, these sad and blackened

shafts,

These vague entablatures, this crumbling frieze, These shattered cornices, this wreck, this ruin, These stones,-alas! these grey stones,-are they

all,

All of the famed and the colossal left

By the corrosive hours to fate and me?
"Not all," the echoes answer me,-"not all!
Prophetic sounds and loud arise forever
From us and from all ruin unto the wise,
As melody from Memnon to the sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men, we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not impotent,—we pallid stones.
Not all our power is gone, not all our fame,
Not all the magic of our high renown,
Not all the wonder that encircles us,
Not all the mysteries that in us lie,
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment,
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."
EDGAR ALLAN POE.

THE ARCH OF TITUS

I STOOD beneath the Arch of Titus long;
On Hebrew forms there sculptured long I pored;
Till fancy, by a distant clarion stung,
Woke; and methought there moved that arch
toward

A Roman triumph.

Lance and helm and sword

Glittered; white coursers tramped and trumpets

rung:

Last came, car-borne amid a captive throng,
The laurelled son of Rome's imperial lord.
As though by wings of unseen eagles fanned
The Conqueror's cheek, when first that arch he

saw,

Burned with the flush he strove in vain to quell. Titus! a loftier arch than thine hath spanned Rome and the world with empery and law; Thereof each stone was hewn from Israel!

AUBREY DE VERE.

THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK

HOMEWARD turning from the music which had so entranced my brain,

That the way I scarce remembered to the Pincian Hill again,

Nay, was willing to forget it underneath a moon

so fair,

In a solitude so sacred, and so summer-like an

air,

Came I to the side of Tiber, hardly conscious where I stood,

Till I marked the sullen murmur of the venerable

flood.

Rome lay doubly dead around me, sunk in silence calm and deep:

'T was the death of desolation, and the mighty one of sleep.

Dreams alone, and recollections, peopled now the solemn hour,

Such a spot and such a season well might wake the Fancy's power;

Yet no monumental fragment, storied arch, or temple vast,

Mid the mean plebeian buildings loudly whispered of the Past.

Tethered by the shore, some barges hid the wave's august repose;

Petty sheds of humble merchants nigh the Campus Martius rose;

Hardly could the dingy Thamis, when his tide is ebbing low,

Life's dull scene in colder colours to the homesick exile show.

Winding from the vulgar prospect, through a labyrinth of lanes,

Forth I stepped upon the Corso where its greatness Rome retains.

Yet it was not ancient glory, though the midnight radiance fell

Soft on many a princely mansion, many a dome's majestic swell;

Though, from some hushed corner gushing, oft a modern fountain gleamed,

Where the marble and the waters in their freshness equal seemed:

What though open courts unfolded columns of Corinthian mould?

Beautiful it was, but altered! naught bespake the Rome of old.

So, regardless of the grandeur, passed I towards the Northern Gate;

All around were shining gardens, churches glittering, yet sedate;

Heavenly bright the broad enclosure! but the o'erwhelming silence brought

Stillness to mine own heart's beating, with a moment's truce of thought,

And I started as I found me walking, ere I was

aware,

O'er the Obelisk's tall shadow, on the pavement of

the square.

Ghost-like seemed it to address me, and conveyed

me for a while,

Backward, through a thousand ages, to the borders of the Nile;

Where, for centuries, every morning saw it creeping long and dun,

O'er the stones perchance of Memphis, or the City of the Sun.

Kingly turrets looked upon it, pyramids and sculptured fanes;

Towers and palaces have mouldered, but the shadow still remains.

Out of that lone tomb of Egypt, o'er the seas the trophy flew;

Here the eternal apparition met the millions' daily

view.

Virgil's foot has touched it often, it hath kissed Octavia's face,

Royal chariots have rolled o'er it, in the frenzy of

the race,

When the strong, the swift, the valiant, mid the thronged arena strove,

In the days of good Augustus and the dynasty of Jove.

Herds are feeding in the Forum, as in old Evander's time;

Tumbled from the steep Tarpeian all the towers that sprang sublime.