Should the base plebeian rabble Dare assail my name at Rome, Where my noble spouse Octavia Weeps within her widow'd home, Seek her; say the gods bear witness-- Altars, augurs, circling wings-- That her blood, with mine commingled, Yet shall mount the throne of kings. As for thee, star-ey'd Egyptian! Glorious sorceress of the Nile! Light the path to Stygian horrors With the splendors of thy smile I can scorn the Senate's triumphs, Triumphing in love like thine. * * * * * Ah! no more amid the battle Shall my heart exulting swell: Isis and Osiris guard thee! Cleopatra--Rome--farewell! Thus perished the great Triumvir, dying like a Roman, whose blinded but persistent love, whatever were its elements, ever shall make his name memorable. All the ages will point to him as a man who gave the world away for the caresses of a woman, and a woman who deceived and ruined him. As for her,--this selfish, heartless sorceress, gifted and beautiful as she was,--what does she do when she sees her lover dead,--dying for her? Does she share his fate? Not she. What selfish woman ever killed herself for love? "Some natural tears she shed, but wiped them soon." She may have torn her clothes, and beaten her breast, and disfigured her face, and given vent to mourning and lamentations. But she does not seek death, nor surrender herself to grief, nor court despair. She renews her strength. She reserves her arts for another victim. She hopes to win Octavius as she had won Julius and Antony; for she was only thirty-nine, and still a queen. And for what? That she might retain her own sovereignty, or the independence of Egypt,--still the most fertile of countries, rich, splendid, and with grand traditions which went back thousands of years; the oldest, and once the most powerful of monarchies. _Her_ love was ever subservient to her interests. Antony gave up ambition for love,--whatever that love was. It took possession of his whole being, not pure and tender, but powerful, strange; doubtless a mad infatuation, and perhaps something more, since it never passed away,--admiration allied with desire, the worship of dazzling gifts, though not of moral virtues. Would such a love have been permanent? Probably not, since the object of it did not shine in the beauty of the soul, but rather in the graces and adornments of the body, intensified indeed by the lustre of bewitching social qualities and the brightness of a cultivated intellect. It is hard to analyze a passionate love between highly gifted people who have an intense development of both the higher and the lower natures, and still more difficult when the idol is a Venus Polyhymnia rather than a Venus Urania. But the love of Antony, whether unwise, or mysterious, or unfortunate, was not feigned or forced: it was real, and it was irresistible; he could not help it.