Strange! that what seemed most inconstant should the most abiding prove;

Strange! that what is hourly moving no mutation

can remove:

Ruined lies the cirque! the chariots, long ago, have ceased to roll

Even the Obelisk is broken - but the shadow still is whole.

What is Fame! if mightiest empires leave so little mark behind,

How much less must heroes hope for, in the wreck of humankind!

Less than even this darksome picture, which I tread beneath my feet,

Copied by a lifeless moonbeam on the pebbles of the street;

Since, if Cæsar's best ambition, living, was to be renowned,

What shall Cæsar leave behind him, save the shadow of a sound?

Thomas Williams Parsons.

The Arch of Titus

(Rome)

I

STOOD beneath the Arch of Titus long

On Hebrew forms there sculptured long I pored;

Till fancy, by a distant clarion stung,

Woke; and methought there moved that arch toward

A Roman triumph. Lance and helm and sword Glittered; white coursers tramped and trumpets rung;

Last came, car-borne amid a captive throng,
The laurelled son of Rome's imperial lord.
As though by wings of unseen eagles fanned
The Conqueror's cheek, when first that arch he

saw,

Burned with the flush he strove in vain to

quell.

Titus! a loftier arch than thine hath spanned
Rome and the world with empery and law;
Thereof each stone was hewn from Israel!

Aubrey de Vere.

St. Peter's by Moonlight

(Rome)

Lo

OW hung the moon when first I stood in
Rome;

Midway she seemed attracted from her sphere,
On those twin fountains shining broad and clear
Whose floods, not mindless of their mountain
home,

Rise there in clouds of rainbow mist and foam.
That hour fulfilled the dream of many a year:
Through that thin mist, with joy akin to fear,
The steps I saw, the pillars, last, the dome.

A spiritual empire there embodied stood;
The Roman Church there met me face to face:
Ages, sealed up, of evil and of good

Slept in that circling colonnade's embrace.
Alone I stood, a stranger and alone,
Changed by that stony miracle to stone.

Aubrey de Vere.

Three Flowers

(Rome)

HERE

EREWITH I send you three pressed withered
flowers:

This one was white, with golden star; this blue
As Capri's cave; that, purple, shotted through
With sunset-orange.
Where the Duomo towers
In crystal air, and on through pendent bowers
The Arno glides, this faded Violet grew

On Landor's grave; from Landor's heart it drew

Its magic azure in the long spring hours.
Within the shadow of the Pyramid

Of Caius Cestius was the Daisy found,
White as the soul of Keats in Paradise.

The Pansy, there were hundreds of them, hid
In the thick grass that folded Shelley's mound,
Guarding his ashes with most lovely eyes.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Monte Cassino. Terra di Lavoro

BEAUTIFUL valley! through whose verdant

meads

Unheard the Garigliano glides along;The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds, The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
Where medieval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface

Was dragged with contumely from his throne; Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegade

Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed Spurred on to Benevento and to death.

There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown
Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night.

Doubled the splendor is, that, in its streets

The Angelic Doctor as a schoolboy played,

And dreamed, perhaps, the dreams that he repeats In ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud

That pauses on a mountain summit high, Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud

And venerable walls against the sky.

Well I remember how on foot I climbed

The stony pathway leading to its gate; Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed, Below, the darkening town grew desolate.

Well I remember the low arch and dark,

The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide, From which far down the valley, like a park Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.

The day was dying, and with feeble hands

Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands

Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.

The silence of the place was like a sleep,
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep

Recesses of the ages that are dead.

For, more than thirteen centuries ago,
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,