LXXX.

They stand, each leaning, turned towards the wall,
With lips impressed; as if they might inhale

Air, or its freshness by that touch recal:
One gasp for life-where breath of life doth fail!
Alas! that faint hope, what may it avail?

Yon loop-holes that receive the air from high,
Take through their apertures the burning gale :
Life feebler draws its breath of agony,

Its audibly thrilling pulse, as Death advances nigh!

LXXXI.

There sits the Roman Matron motionless,

Her infant stretched round her, in their last rest: What words her mighty sorrows could express? But she, so beautiful in youth, hath pressed, Fair Julia, to her mother, and caressed, As those who part for ever! and they kiss: Such kisses as reveal, though unconfessed, The desolating truth-that death hath less Pang than this last farewell to hope-to happiness!

LXXXII.

One last long-wild-nd passionate embrace

For those who shall embrace in life no more!
Then, with fixed will portrayed in her stern face,
The Matron rose to' unclose the heated door;
One shrill but stifled shriek told all was o'er !
The strained bars flew-the weight of ashes, rife
With sulphurous fires, heaped up the burning floor:
A moment's agony-a feeble strife

To meet to join-to clasp-then ceased the pulse of

life!

LXXXIII.

But Time and Life rolled on: and Nature spent

The wrath that had for ages slept so nigh,

To burst, above the living imminent,

Perchance, when some far morrow shall ally
Itself with the Eternity gone by!

Where Cities rose, and strove for rival sway,
Are ash-heaps; burying them from human eye,
As once on some forgotten Yesterday,
Anterior Pompeii's turned again to clay:

LXXXIV.

Forming a basis o'er their wreck beneath:

And men may sport awhile, forgetful there,
Living above a wilderness of death!

Empires rise, flourish, fall: new faiths repair
The ruins of the old: and Nations dare

To talk of freedom, now no more a dream :

But still of Mutability the heir

Is man: a straw-borne down the mighty stream Of tendency-all free and ruling though he seem.

LXXXV.

Yon Sun-lit Isles that shoreless ether range,

Departing, own, in each receding beam,

The' inevitable laws of Time and Change:

What are we?-foam-drops swept before the stream Whose tendency is infinite: a gleam,

A spark-and we are fled-but where to dwell?

Who shall the light of worlds and man redeem?

Who, raise-who, save-save Thou, Ineffable!

Thou Cause-thou Source of All-whose nature who

shall tell?

LXXXVI.

What are fallen Empires, wrecks of buried Power,

Earth's heaped-up Babel-piles that meet the skies,

The toys of tyrants that outlived their hour,
Cumbering the ground in thy Almighty eyes?
What is the World beneath Thee as it flies ?-

A grain, an atom floating upon space,
Which human pride so fondly magnifies!
Was it a Hell or Paradise? what trace,

What record, tells the hour which fixed its airy base?

LXXXVII.

What are our ruined piles to Nature's own?

Her sky-roofed Temple with yon lights enshrined,
The eternal cressets of Heaven's starry zone:
Her Organ-pipe the Voices of the Wind:

Or when the Tempests, with the thunder joined,
Raise up their thrilling Choral: yon Hills riven,
The shattered pillars which in vain confined
Her mighty area; the Ocean driven

Wildly between their sides, upheaving into heaven,

LXXXVIII.

Shells, and the Mammoth of past ages, rolled

From her once-peopled depths, as if in scorn,
Upon their topmost capitals! behold,

Deep in the graven stone the traces worn

Of their quick life; what armies hath it borne,
What infinite hosts have swept along the earth,
Their records all forgot, their glories shorn;

Yet have these weak things left their trace, their birth, As if to show vain men what dusty fame is worth!

LXXXIX.

We stand beside the Ocean-waves that hide

One world-which buried both and feel a fear
While its deep Voice appeals to human pride:
We upward look: Thy Shrine doth there appear,
Thou, whom each Star doth worship with its sphere:
What feel we, gazing, but humility?

How weak the thought that soars to seek Thee there: Men on earth's sun-lit hills first bowed the knee, They felt those giant-steps were guides that led to Thee!

END OF CANTO V.