GREAT brown eyes, Thick plumes of hair, Old corduroys The worse for wear. A button’d jacket, And peeping out An ape’s grave poll, Or a guinea-pig’s snout. A sun-kiss’d face And a dimpled mouth, With the white flashing teeth, And soft smile of the south. A young back bent, Not with age or care, But the load of poor music ’Tis fated to bear. But a common-place picture To common-place eyes, Yet full of a charm Which the thinker will prize. They were stern, cold rulers, Those Romans of old, Scorning art and letters For conquest and gold; Yet leavening mankind, In mind and tongue, With the laws that they made And the songs that they sung. Sitting, rose-crown’d, With pleasure-choked breath, As the nude young limbs crimson’d, Then stiffen’d in death. Piling up monuments Greater than praise, Thoughts and deeds that shall live To the latest of days. Adding province to province, And sea to sea, Till the idol fell down And the world rose up free. And this is the outcome, This vagabond child With that statue-like face And eyes soft and mild; This creature so humble, So gay, yet so meek, Whose sole strength is only The strength of the weak. Of those long cruel ages Of lust and of guile, Nought left us to-day But an innocent smile. For the labour’d appeal Of the orator’s art, A few foolish accents That reach to the heart. For those stern legions speeding O’er sea and o’er land, But a pitiful glance And a suppliant hand. I could moralize still But the organ begins, And the tired ape swings downward, And capers and grins, And away flies romance. And yet, time after time, As I dwell on days spent In a sunnier clime, Of blue lakes deep set In the olive-clad mountains, Of gleaming white palaces Girt with cool fountains, Of minsters where every Carved stone is a treasure, Of sweet music hovering ’Twixt pain and ’twixt pleasure; Of chambers enrich’d On all sides, overhead, With the deathless creations Of hands that are dead; Of still cloisters holy, And twilight arcade, Where the lovers still saunter Thro’ chequers of shade; Of tomb and of temple, Arena and column, ’Mid to-day’s garish splendours, Sombre and solemn; Of the marvellous town With the salt-flowing street, Where colour burns deepest, And music most sweet; Of her the great mother, Who centuries sate ’Neath a black shadow blotting The days she was great; Who was plunged in such shame— She, our source and our home— That a foul spectre only Was left us of Rome; She who, seeming to sleep Through all ages to be, Was the priest’s, is mankind’s,— Was a slave, and is free!