Fearing her end, and wishing still, mayhap,
Enough to hold to pay stern Charon’s oar
When the dead nations o’er the Styx it bore.
II.
And was this Rome—this shrunken, shivering form,
This beggared greatness sitting abject down;
Her throne a broken shaft’s acanthus crown
Whose crumbling beauty still outlived the storm?
Where were her legions? eagles? where her pride?
The conqueror’s laurel binding once her head?—