L.

Yet what a social haunt the Forum here,

For recreation and delight!-the sky
Hued in its twilight loveliness; its sphere
Blue as yon Sea, whose breath refreshingly
Arose, and gladdened every heart and eye,
Oppressed, and fevered with the heats of day:
Moments when life was felt, when even the sigh
Was pleasure; impulses that all obey,

As Nature o'er the heart exerts her magic sway.

LI.

Thou who dost press the seats around arrayed,

In that void Theatre; yon stage, the same
They saw, save where the Scene illusion made;
Whom the same hopes, wants, joys, and wishes claim,

As thy own fellow-men: thou wilt not blame
Thyself for weakness, if, from thought severe
Thy brow relaxing, gentler feelings tame:
If thou dost sigh, it may be, drop a tear

For those who lived like thee, who thronged rejoicing

here!

LII.

And muse upon the satire and applause,

That lightly mocked the follies of the hour; Or the more dignifying Scene that draws The tears which own the Muse's tragic power; And they who gazed,- the lover, and his flower Of beauty, near him ; in whose ear was sighed That tale still prized beyond the wealthiest dower; Where are they now in their patrician pride? Their very dust with nature doth no more abide!

LIII.

Yet, rising there, one living witness stands,

As if designed a monument to be

More touching than if reared by human hands,

For it doth speak aloud its elegy

In sounds which ever here make melody'

A requiem for those who long have fled;

Yon shadowing and gigantic willow!—see How its broad, bright green umbrage round is shed As if by Nature reared to mourn above the dead.

LIV.

How vacant now those seats where Life hath been;

The columns, the orchestra, and the Scene;

Behind which toiled inventive art to win

The thunder of the applauding gods; how green

Yon landscape in the distance! how serene

Above, the quiet of yon azure sphere !

No roof, or light velarium spread between ;

How like a desolate and open bier

Mid Nature's deathless works man's mortal wrecks

appear!

LV.

Looking a Satire, how severely true,

Upon the enjoyments of the vanished dead;

The stage of human life exposed to view:
Its gauds, and shows, and tinsel fopperies fled:
How like a Skull 'tis cast beneath! ye thread
Those avenues which man no more shall build :
The portals, and the winding paths that led

To chambers once with stirring life so filled: Where the retiring Mind planned, reasoned, thought, and willed.

LVI.

The Street of Tombs! the dwelling-place of those

Who heard not when the fires above them swept,
Hushed in their last mysterious repose:

But in those hollowed niches where they slept,
Even in their urns, the fiery vapour crept:

The mountain's ashes, and the human dust
Mingled together! ashes, that once kept

Their urns, perchance, like these around, ere thrust Forth from the yawning earth where men did them

entrust.

LVII.

I stood within the chamber of the dead:

Its flower-wreathed walls stood open to the sky:

The central pedestal still reared its head,

Where stood the Urn; the seats rose ordered nigh,
Half-circling, when the guests or heaved the sigh,
Or poured libations, or called him to hear
His praises who was deaf: vain flattery,

Proffered too late to dull oblivion's ear!—

Or spread the untasted feast upon the wintry bier.

LVIII.

Tribute of love to the Departed!—yet

A mockery on the living, who, ere o'er

The passing hour, might ask the same regret:
Ah! nobler had it been to kneel before

Death's portal, opening on the untrodden shore,

Not revelling and feasting, but with trust
Lowliest in Him who can the dead restore:

That, though the human frame dissolve to dust,

The soul should mount to heaven, and mingle with the

Just.

LIX.

I sate within that House, even then, as now,
A Tomb raised up from earth to meet the day;
The airs blew freshly fanning o'er my brow:
The Sky looked in, and the Sun's gladdening ray,
As when the life it quickened passed away :

Ruin, tricked out in tinsel pageantry,

Seemed as it mocked the moral of decay;

Life in her masquerading revelry

Surprised-arrested in that motley garb to die.