In Rome’s great forum, who but hears him roll
His moral thunders o’er the subject soul? 
   And hence that calm delight the portrait gives: 
We gaze on every feature till it lives! 
Still the fond lover views the absent maid;
And the lost friend still lingers in his shade! 
Say why the pensive widow loves to weep, [m]
When on her knee she rocks her babe to sleep: 
Tremblingly still, she lifts his veil to trace
The father’s features in his infant face. 
The hoary grandsire smiles the hour away,
Won by the charm of Innocence at play;
He bends to meet each artless burst of joy,
Forgets his age, and acts again the boy. 
   What tho’ the iron school of War erase
Each milder virtue, and each softer grace;
What tho’ the fiend’s torpedo-touch arrest
Each gentler, finer impulse of the breast;
Still shall this active principle preside,
And wake the tear to Pity’s self denied. 
   The intrepid Swiss, that guards a foreign shore,
Condemn’d to climb his mountain-cliffs no more,
If chance he hears the song so sweetly wild [n]
Which on those cliffs his infant hours beguil’d,
Melts at the long-lost scenes that round him rise,
And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs. 
   Ask not if courts or camps dissolve the charm: 
Say why vespasian lov’d his Sabine farm; [o]
Why great Navarre, when France and freedom bled, [p]
Sought the lone limits of a forest-shed. 
When DIOCLETIAN’S self-corrected mind [q]
The imperial fasces of a world resign’d,
Say why we trace the labours of his spade,
In calm Salona’s philosophic shade. 
Say, when contentious Charles renounc’d a throne, [r]
To muse with monks unletter’d and unknown,
What from his soul the parting tribute drew? 
What claim’d the sorrows of a last adieu? 
The still retreats that sooth’d his tranquil breast,
Ere grandeur dazzled, and its cares oppress’d. 
   Undamp’d by time, the generous Instinct glows
Far as Angola’s sands, as Zembla’s snows;
Glows in the tiger’s den, the serpent’s nest,
On every form of varied life imprest. 
The social tribes its choicest influence hail:—­
And, when the drum beats briskly in the gale,
The war-worn courser charges at the sound,
And with young vigour wheels the pasture round. 
   Oft has the aged tenant of the vale
Lean’d on his staff to lengthen out the tale;
Oft have his lips the grateful tribute breath’d,
From sire to son with pious zeal bequeath’d. 
When o’er the blasted heath the day declin’d,
And on the scath’d oak warr’d the winter-wind;
When not a distant taper’s twinkling ray
Gleam’d o’er the furze to light him on his way;
When not a sheep-bell sooth’d his listening ear,
And the big rain-drops told the tempest near;
Then did his horse the homeward track descry, [s]
The track that shunn’d his sad, inquiring eye;
And win each wavering purpose to relent,