Heavens! had the death-piles of the ancient years
Flared up in vain before me? Knew I not
What stench arises from their purple gears,
And how the sceptres witness whence they got
Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's
Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot?
Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou,
Who trailest downhill into life again
Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow
Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain
That while the illegitimate Cæsars show
Of meaner stature than the first full strain,
(Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul)
They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons
As rashly as any Julius of them all.
Forgive, that I forgot the mind that runs
Through absolute races, too unsceptical!
I saw the man among his little sons,
His lips warm with their kisses while he swore,
And I, because I am a woman, I,
Who felt my own child's coming life before
The prescience of my soul, and held faith high,
I could not bear to think, whoever bore,
That lips, so warmed, could shape so cold a lie.
VI.
Again looked, and beheld a different sight.
The Duke had fled before the people's shout
"Long live the Duke!" A people, to speak right,
Should speak as soft as courtiers, lest a doubt
Turn gracious sovereign brows to curdled white.
