Page:Thirty poems (IA thirtypoems00bryarich).pdf/97
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THE RUINS OF ITALICA.
91
Here lay the forum, there arose the fane,
The eye beholds their places and no more.
Their proud gymnasium and their sumptuous baths,
Resolved to dust and cinders, strew the paths.
Their towers, that looked defiance at the sky,
Fallen by their own vast weight, in fragments lie.
II.
This broken circus, where the rock weeds climb,
Flaunting with yellow blossoms, and defy
The gods to whom its walls were piled so high,
Is now a tragic theatre, where Time
Acts his great fable, spreads a stage that shows
Past grandeur's story and its dreary close.
Why, round this desert pit,
Shout not the applauding rows
Where the great people sit?
Wild beasts are here, but where the combatant,
The eye beholds their places and no more.
Their proud gymnasium and their sumptuous baths,
Resolved to dust and cinders, strew the paths.
Their towers, that looked defiance at the sky,
Fallen by their own vast weight, in fragments lie.
II.
This broken circus, where the rock weeds climb,
Flaunting with yellow blossoms, and defy
The gods to whom its walls were piled so high,
Is now a tragic theatre, where Time
Acts his great fable, spreads a stage that shows
Past grandeur's story and its dreary close.
Why, round this desert pit,
Shout not the applauding rows
Where the great people sit?
Wild beasts are here, but where the combatant,