Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VOICES OF ROME, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VOICES OF ROME, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: See, from the tower of the capitol, looking abroad
Last Line: To build an everlasting state.
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Caesar, Julius (100-44 B.c.); Past; Roman Empire; Voices


I.

SEE, from the tower of the Capitol, looking abroad,
Ru'n on ruin, the bones of the skeleton spread!
Peeked through the ages by vultures of force and of fraud,
Spoiled by the warrior, crushed by the hierarch's tread.
Build, if thou canst, the unlimited splendors again,
Pillar and architrave back to their places restore:
So to confess that the effort of fancy is vain, --
Though it has been, yet it can be no more!

II.

Behold! the ages cannot trust us
With even the records meant to last:
Is this the home of that Augustus
Whose throne upbore the splendid past?
Of all the triumphs, the orations,
The wealth, is nothing left but these,
Which tell of old abominations,
Of treacheries and tyrannies?

III.

Here, like an Emperor, rideth Aurelius still;
There, in unperishing marble, Tiberius stands:
Rome and her Caesars extend from the sovereign hill
Sceptre of rule, and their spirits yet govern the lands!
What are the shrines which, usurping their temples, arise
Over the altars of gods, but the shadow of theirs?
Mimicking incense and sacrifice, clouding the skies,
Bright with old deities, thus with confusion of prayers!

IV.

The fern o'erhangs the ancient altar,
The ivy drapes the ruined shrine,
Yet Faith remains though fancy falter,
And loss of gods makes men divine.
Pure as the sunshine, and as fervent,
Our truth the stately wreck illumes
And not as ruler, but as servant,
We call the Past from all its tombs.

V.

Delve, as ye may, for the fragments of
Art that has died,
Fragments they are of a beauty ye cannot recall;
Down from the loneliest column that still doth abide,
Graces unknown to the following centuries fall.
Take from the ruin and cleanse from the mould of decay
Statue or torso or bust, and exalt them as yours:
Yours are the fugitive triumphs, the art of a day, --
Theirs are the beauty and strength that forever endures!

VI.

Ah, hark! 't is yet the undying Siren
Who sings more sweetly than of old,
To make us feel our days are iron
Beside the perished days of gold:
But Beauty now, no more an exile
From common hearths and humble homes,
Assumes new being, warm and flexile,
And is the world's, not merely Rome's!

VII.

Ah, from the pinnacle, ne'er to be mounted again,
Mock us the grandeurs august of the past that has fled!
Valor and sacrifice, triumph of heart and of brain,
Wealth of the world, and its life -- and our ages are dead!
Weak is the hand of the race, and its courage but faint,
Slow is the spirit creative that once was so bold;
All our achievement a shadow, that echoes complaint
Since we are lorn of the grace and the glory of old!

VIII.

No more in brief, inconstant flashes,
We hail the fitful dawn of truth,
Our feet on many an Empire's ashes,
We feel the world's eternal youth.
On firmer than the old foundations
We base the promise of our fate,
And take the wreck of crumbled nations
To build an everlasting State.





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