Marius. “If thou hadst ears, O Carthage! for the voice That speaks among thy ruins, it would cheer The spirit that was crushed beneath my heel, To hear the tongue of thy destroyer swear To live as thy avenger. I have striven For Rome against thee, till, in frequent strife, Thy might was overthrown—thy might as great As Rome’s in days most palmy—save in this: Thou hadst no soul as potent in thy service, As I have been in hers. And thou, and all— The Gaul, the Goth, the Cimbrian—all the tribes That swelled the northern torrents, and brought down, Yearly, the volumed avalanche on Rome, Have sunk beneath my arm, until secure She sat aloft in majesty, seven-throned, And knew or feared no foe. This was my work— Nor this alone; from the patrician sway, That used her as the creature of his will, I plucked her eagles, casting down his power Beneath plebeian footstep. For long years Of cruellest oppression and misrule, I took a merited vengeance on her pride, Debasing her great sons, that in their fall Her people might be men. I loved her tribes, Since they were mine. I made their homes secure; I raised their free condition into state— And I am here! These ruins speak for me— An exile; scarred with honorable wounds, At seventy years, alone and desolate. “But the o’er-ruling Deities decree My triumph. From thy ruins comes a voice Full of most sweet assurance. Hark! it cries To me as thy avenger. Thou forgiv’st My hand the evil it has wrought on thee, That the same hand, upon thy conqueror’s head May work like ruin. The atoning Fates Speak through thy desolation. They declare That I shall tread the ungrateful city’s streets, Armed with keen weapon and consuming fire, And still unglutted rage. My wrath shall sow The seeds of future ruins in her heart, So that her fall, if far less swift than thine, Shall be yet more complete. She shall consume With more protracted suffering. She shall pass Through thousand ordeals of the strife and storm, Each bitterer than the last—each worse than thine— A dying that shall linger with its pain Its dread anxieties, its torturing scourge; A period long as life, with life prolonged, Only for dire, deserved miseries. Her state shall fluctuate through successive years, With now great shows of pride—with arrogance That goes before destruction—that her fall May more increase her shame. The future grows— Drear characters, as written on a wall— In fiery lines before me; and I read The rise of thousands who shall follow me, Each emulous of vengeance fell as mine, By mine at first begotten. Yet why gaze In profitless survey of the work of years, Inevitable to the prescient soul, And leave our own undone? I hear a voice Reproaching me that I am slow to vengeance; I, whom the Fates but spare a few short hours, That I may open paths to other masters, For whom they find the scourge. They tutor me That mine’s a present mission; not for me To traverse the wide future in pursuit Of those who shall succeed me in their service,