LXXXV.

   Sylla was first of victors; but our own,
   The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!—­he
   Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
   Down to a block—­immortal rebel!  See
   What crimes it costs to be a moment free
   And famous through all ages!  But beneath
   His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
   His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.

LXXXVI.

   The third of the same moon whose former course
   Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day
   Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
   And laid him with the earth’s preceding clay. 
   And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
   And all we deem delightful, and consume
   Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
   Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? 
Were they but so in man’s, how different were his doom!

LXXXVII.

   And thou, dread statue! yet existent in
   The austerest form of naked majesty,
   Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins’ din,
   At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
   Folding his robe in dying dignity,
   An offering to thine altar from the queen
   Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
   And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

LXXXVIII.

   And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! 
   She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
   The milk of conquest yet within the dome
   Where, as a monument of antique art,
   Thou standest:  —­Mother of the mighty heart,
   Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat,
   Scorched by the Roman Jove’s ethereal dart,
   And thy limbs blacked with lightning—­dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX.

   Thou dost;—­but all thy foster-babes are dead —
   The men of iron; and the world hath reared
   Cities from out their sepulchres:  men bled
   In imitation of the things they feared,
   And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
   At apish distance; but as yet none have,
   Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
   Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,

XC.

   The fool of false dominion—­and a kind
   Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
   With steps unequal; for the Roman’s mind
   Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,
   With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,
   And an immortal instinct which redeemed
   The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold. 
   Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
At Cleopatra’s feet, and now himself he beamed.