The blush of innocence upon her cheek, The burning pride that flashed within her eye, The majesty enthroned upon her brow, Told, in a language which the tyrant _felt_, That her unconquered spirit soared sublime In a pure orbit whither _his_ sordid soul Could ne'er attain. Had he a captive led Some odious wretch, whose sanguinary crimes, Long perpetrated under sanction of a strength No arm could reach, had spread a pall of mourning Over a people's desolated homes, He then had _right_ to triumph o'er his victim. But 't was not thus. Insatiable ambition Had led him to unsheath his victor sword Against a monarch whose distinctive sway Ravished from Rome no tittle of her _right_; And, to augment the aggregate of wrong, _That monarch was a woman_, whose renown, Compared with his, was gold compared with brass. As o'er the stony street the captive paced Her weary way before the victor's steeds, And marked the multitudes insatiate gaze, The look of calm defiance on her face Told that she bowed not to her degradation. Her thoughts were not at Rome. Unheeded all, The billows of the mad excitement dashed About her, and broke harmless at her feet. Dim reminiscences of former days Burst like a deluge on her errant mind; Leading her backward to the buried past, When in the artless buoyancy of youth She sat beneath Palmyra's fragrant shades And gleaned the pages of historic story, Red with Rome's bloody catalogue of wrong. Little she dreamed Palmyra's palaces Should e'er be scenes of Roman violence; Little she dreamed that _hers_ should be the lot (A captive princess led in chains) to crown The splendor of a Roman holyday. Alas! the blow she thought not of had fallen. A bloody struggle, like a dreadful dream, Had briefly raged, and all to her was lost, Save the poor grace of a degraded life. Her sun of glory was gone down in blood-- The glittering fabric of her power despoiled To swell the triumph of her conqueror. But in the wreck of her magnificence, With eye prophetic, she foresaw the ruin Of the proud capital of all the world. She saw the quickening symptoms of rebellion Among the nations, and she caught their cry For _freedom_ and for _vengeance_! * * * * * Hark! the Goth Is thundering at the gate, His reckless sword Leaps from the scabbard, eager to vindicate The cause of the oppressed. A thousand years The sun has witnessed in his daily course The tyranny of Rome, now crushed _forever_. The mighty mass of her usurped dominion, By its own magnitude at last dissevered, Is crumbling into fragments; and the shades Of long-forgotten generations shriek With fiendish glee over the yawning gulf Of her perdition. TEMPER LIFE'S EXTREMES. BY GEORGE S. BURLEIGH.