“A sudden chill has struck me: do I shake? I would not have this trembling of old age Imputed to me as a show of fear; Only the wind of dawn has chilled my blood, Grown sluggish now. Death will be kind to me. Does the dawn lighten? Nay, I thought the stars Grew paler, but a mist was on mine eyes. So long are these few hours I have to live, Ere death come: yet it seems a little while To those who smell the odorous warm earth, Steaming in heat, and have the cattle’s breath, And scent of bean-fields wafted, and the choir Of birds, and distant bleating of the sheep, Coming from some dew-laden mountain-slope Of pasture o’er the corn-lands: those, who look On life, have merry hours, that fly too swift, To dancing measures, but our dying eyes See stretched before us all eternity, That passes never. Voices come to me Out of the deep, insurgent spirits throng The gloomy portals, through which I must pass, Blown like autumnal leaves, in whirling flight, Above the dim untenanted abyss. Some have their faces darkened, as they fade Into that darkness; others, issuing thence, Have caught the light of morning in their eyes, And rise toward the sunny warmth of life, To take Fate’s spindle from our failing hands: They ride in golden panoply, a pomp Of kings, to reap the harvest we have sown, And do the things we dreamed, but failed to do. What man of them shall sit where Cæsar sate, Who sent his missionary eagles forth Into strange countries, bearers of the light, Makers of laws; who from the utmost bounds Of Euxine to where Gades lifts its prow Above the thunder of the surge and fronts The unexplored Atlantic, questioning The secret hid by separating seas, Held tributary peoples numberless In fee; and through whose subjugated lands Glided the Nile between its reedy flats Where Memnon sits; and the broad-bosomed flow Of dark Euphrates by the ruined towers Of Babylon, from whence of old was seen By wise Chaldæan sorcerers, the light, Majestic, of the new-born Syrian star; Yea, and our Rhine fed by its cataracts, Whose forests keep the night, and Danube full Where Ovid mourned the loss of all his loves, And in the hollow land Eurotas clear, Cold with the streaming snows of Taygetus, The nurse and mother of that austere brood Sprung from the loins of Heracles, and those Twin sons of Leda, for whom Helen’s eyes Yearned from the walls of Troy and yearned in vain: Through all these lands triumphant eagles led Rome’s legions, and peace followed after them With civil order and restraint of laws. But Rome herself, circled by seven hills, Astride the Tiber’s fluctuating gold, Though less of girth was greater than all these, Not through dominion over them, but in The civic sense, which quickened in her sons