To silken ease, and mirth, and song, and dance,
And festal follies in Etruscan halls—
Bacchantic revels, when the sun went down,
Beyond the city walls,
Couldst well gaze on the mass with eagle eye,
Demanding as a right their voice, and blush
To bare thy scars, while thy patrician scorn
Made cheek and forehead flush.
The base cabals—the hate which drove thee forth
A wanderer, ennobled thee: thy fame
Looked lightning on the curs that dared abuse,
But lacked the power to shame.
Prouder thy spirit in that trying hour
Than theirs who stung thee: well might'st thou go forth
Undaunted, for thy fame was not of Rome,
But, rather, of the earth.
Yet it was hard to leave thy wife and babe—
Virgilia and thy little one—hard to break
The bonds that held thee to them: Rome grew dear—
Most dear for their sweet sake.
But as their forms waxed dim, thy festering heart
Looked from thine eyes; thy swelling nostrils told
The inward struggle, and thy heaving chest
A human ocean rolled.
Kneeling upon the ground, thy sinister arm
Adjuring heaven, thy soul broke forth in tones
Of thunder; but thy agony in that hour
Pale Rome repaid with groans.
Coldly, with stately step and placid brow—
A lull—the herald of the approaching storm—
Thou went'st thy way toward Antium—trod its streets
Without the thought of harm.
Humble was thy approach, but thou went'st forth
A Mars of the time—thy snorting steed arrayed
And glistering with gold, while at thy heels
A thousand clarions brayed.
Rome from her seven hills looked down with fear,
Appalled and breathless, while her people stood
Like men awoke from sleep, amazed, aghast—
With agues in their blood.