THE PANTHEON

SIMPLE, erect, severe, austere, sublime,—
Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus,-spared and blest by time;
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods

His way through thorns to ashes, glorious dome!

Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants'

rods

Shiver upon thee,-sanctuary and home Of art and piety,-Pantheon!-pride of Rome!

Relic of nobler days and noblest arts! Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads A holiness appealing to all hearts,— To art a model; and to him who treads Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds Her light through thy sole aperture; to those Who worship, here are altars for their beads; And they who feel for genius may repose Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around

them close.

LORD BYRON.

ARA COELI.

WHOEVER Will go to Rome may see,
In the chapel of the Sacristy

Of Ara-Cœli, the Sainted Child,—
Garnished from throat to foot with rings
And brooches and precious offerings,
And its little nose kissed quite away
By dying lips. At Epiphany,
If the holy winter day prove mild,

It is shown to the wondering, gaping crowd
On the church's steps,-held high aloft,—
While every sinful head is bowed,

And the music plays, and the censer's soft
White breath ascends like silent prayer.
Many a beggar kneeling there,

Tattered and hungry, without a home,
Would not envy the Pope of Rome,
If he, the beggar, had half the care
Bestowed on him that falls to the share
Of yonder Image,-for you must know
It has its minions to come and go,
Its perfumed chamber, remote and still,
Its silken couch, and its jewelled throne,
And a special carriage of its own
To take the air in, when it will.

And though it may neither drink nor eat,
By a nod to its ghostly seneschal

It could have the choicest wine and meat.
Often some princess, brown and tall,
Comes, and unclasping from her arm
The glittering bracelet, leaves it, warm
With her throbbing pulse, at the Baby's feet.
Ah, He is loved by high and low,

Adored alike by simple and wise.

The people kneel to Him in the street.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

THE STEPS OF ARA CŒLI

A ladder, realler, dearer

Than that to the patriarch known;

A stair whose every stone
Leads one to Heaven nearer.

For this divine, aerial

Fabric the architect
Searched Nature to select

The grandest of material.

Marbles, in ancient time

Unrivalled, he took as a token,—
Which mattocks blind had broken
Intent on nought but lime,

Which now will never salute us
From the gleaming shrine of the god,
Or from the pavement trod

By the feet of the Gracchi and Brutus.

But in spite of the cavalieros

And the rabble that worship the doll—
As at the capitol-

Lo! the mounting shades of the heroes!

SULLY PRUDHOMME.

Tr. Robert Haven Schauffler.

THE VATICAN

OR, TURNING to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain,-
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending: vain
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's
grasp,

The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links,-the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.

Or view the lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life and poesy and light,—

The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from its triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot, the arrow
bright

With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain and might
And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the deity.

But in his delicate form-a dream of love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision—are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blessed

The mind within its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest,-
A ray of immortality,-and stood,

Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god!

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven The fire which we endure, it was repaid By him to whom the energy was given Which this poetic marble hath arrayed With an eternal glory,-which if made By human hands, is not of human thought; And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid One ringlet in the dust,―nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 't was wrought. LORD BYRON.