The Ascent of Man. Blind Mathilde

Through years of dusty days

       Brick by slow brick shall raise

       The incarnate pride of kings—the Pyramids—

       Linked with some name synonymous with slaughter

       Time has effaced like a name writ in water.

      For ever with fateful shocks,

       Roar as of hurtling rocks,

       Start fresh embattled hosts with flags unfurled,

       To meet on battle-fields

       With clash of spears and shields,

       Widowing the world of men to win the world:

       The hissing air grows dark with iron rain,

       And groans the earth beneath her sheaves of slain.

      Triumphant o'er them all,

       See crowns and sceptres fall

       Before the arms of iron-soldered legions;

       As Capitolian Rome

       Across the salt sea foam

       Orders her Cæsars to remotest regions:

       From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seas

       To the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.

      Pallas unmatched in war,

       To her triumphal car

       Rome chains fallen despots and discrownèd queens

       With many a rampant beast,

       Birds from the gorgeous East,

       And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes;

       There huge barbarians from Druidic woods

       Tower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;

      For still untamed and free

       In loathed captivity,

       Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke,

       Though for a Roman sight

       They must in mimic fight

       Give wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke,

       While round the arena rings the fierce applause

       Voluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flows

      In streams of purple rain

       From hecatombs of slain

       Saluting Cæsar still with failing breath,

       But in their dying souls

       Undying hate, which rolls

       From land to land the avalanche of Death,

       That, gathering volume as it sweeps along,

       Pours down the Alps throng on unnumbered throng.

      From northern hills and plains

       Storm-lashed by driving rains,

       From moorland wastes and depths of desolate wood,

       From many an icebound shore,

       The human torrents pour,

       Horde following upon horde as flood on flood,

       Avengers of the slain they come, they come,

       And break in thunder on the walls of Rome.

      A trembling people waits

       As, surging through its gates,

       Break the fierce Goths with trumpet-blasts of doom;

       And many a glorious shrine

       Begins to flare and shine,

       And many a palace flames up through the gloom,

       Kindled like torches by relentless wrath

       To light the Spoiler on destruction's path.

      Yea, with Rome's ravished walls,

       The old world tottering falls

       And crumbles into ruin wide and vast;

       The Empire seems to rock

       As with an earthquake's shock,

       And vassal provinces look on aghast;

       As realms are split and nation rent from nation,

       The globe seems drifting to annihilation.