BRUTUS IN HIS TENT.
BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.
How ill this taper burns!—hah! who comes here? Shakspeare.
On wall-girt Sardis weary day hath shed
The golden blaze of his expiring beam;
And rings her paven walks beneath the tread
Of guards that near the hour of battle deem—
Whose brazen helmets in the starlight gleam;
From tented lines no murmur loud descends,
For martial thousands of the battle dream
On which the fate of bleeding Rome depends
When blushing dawn awakes and night's dark curtain rends.
Though hushed War's couchant tigers in their lair
The tranquil time to one brings not repose—
A voice was whispering to his soul—"Despair!
The gods will give the triumph to thy foes."
Can sleep, with leaden hand, our eyelids close
When throng distempered fancies, and depart,
And thought a shadow on the future throws?
When shapes unearthly into being start,
And, like a snake, Remorse uncoils within the heart?
At midnight deep when bards avow that tombs
Are by their cold inhabitants forsaken,
The Roman chief his wasted lamp relumes,
And calmly reads by mortal wo unshaken:
His iron frame of rest had not partaken,
And doubt—dark enemy of slumber—fills
A breast where fear no trembling chord could waken,
And on his ear an awful voice yet thrills
That rose, when Cæsar fell, from Rome's old Seven Hills.