Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be,
Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea,
Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind,
Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind,
Light among the vanished ages, star that gildest yet this phantom shore,
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more,
Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar’s dome—
Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome—
Now the Rome of slaves hath perished, and the Rome of freemen holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Island, sundered once from all the human race,