Cæsar
Wake, Rome! destruction’s at thy door.
Rouse thee! for thou wilt sleep no more
Till thou shalt sleep in death:
The tramp of storm-shod Mars is near—
His chariot’s thundering roll I hear,
His trumpet’s startling breath.
Who comes?—not they, thy fear of old,
The blue-eyed Gauls, the Cimbrians bold,
Who like a hail-shower in the May
Came, and like hail they pass’d away;
But one with surer sword,
A child whom thou hast nursed, thy son,
Thy well-beloved, thy favoured one,
Thy Cæsar comes—thy lord!
The ghost of Marius walks to-night
By Anio’s banks in shaggy plight,
And laughs with savage glee;
And Sylla from his loathsome death,
Scenting red Murder’s reeking breath,
Doth rise to look on thee.
Signs blot the sky; the deep-vex’d earth
Breeds portents of a monstrous birth;
And augurs pale with fear have noted
The dark-vein’d liver strangely bloated,
Hinting some dire disaster.
To right the wrongs of human kind
Behold! the lordly Rome to bind,
A Roman comes—a master.
He comes whom, nor the Belgic band,
The bravest Nervii might withstand
With pleasure-spurning souls
Nor they might give his star eclipse,
The sea-swept Celts with high-tower’d ships,
Where westmost ocean rolls.
Him broad-waved Rhine reluctant own’d
As ’neath the firm-set planks it groan’d,
Then, when the march of spoiling Rome
Stirr’d the far German’s forest-home;
And when he show’d his rods
Back to their marshy dens withdrew
The Titan-hearted Suevians blue,
That dared the immortal gods.
Him Britain from her extreme shores,
Where fierce the huge-heaved ocean roars,
Beholding, bent the knee.
Now, Pompey, now! from rushing Fate
Thy Rome redeem: but ’tis too late,
Nor lives that strength in thee.
In vain for thee State praises flow
From lofty-sounding Cicero;
Vainly Marcellus prates thy cause,
And Cato, true to parchment laws,
Protests with rigid hands:
The echo of a by-gone fame,
The shadow of a mighty name,
The far-praised Pompey stands.
Lift up thine eyes, and see! Sheer down,
From where the Alps tremendous frown,
Strides War, which Julius leads:
Eager to follow, to pursue—
Sleepless, to one high purpose true,
The prosperous soldier speeds.
He comes, all eye to scan, all hand
To do, the instinct of command;
With firm-set tread, and pointed will,
And harden’d courage, practised skill,
And anger-whetted sword:
A man to seize, and firmly hold—
To his own use a world to mould—
Rome’s not unworthy lord!
The little Rubicon doth brim
Its purple tide—a check for him,
Hinted, how vainly! 15 He
All bounds and marks, the world’s dull wonder,
Calmly o’erleaps, and snaps asunder
All reverend ties that be!
The soldier carries in his sword
The primal right by bridge or ford
To pass. Shall kingly Cæsar fall
And kiss the ground—the Senate’s thrall
And boastful Pompey’s drudge?
Forthwith, with one bold plunge, is pass’d
The fateful flood—“the Die is cast;
Let Fortune be the judge!”16
The day rose on Ariminum
With War’s shrill cry—They come! they come!
Nor they unwelcomed came;
Pisauram, Fanum’s shrine, and thou,
Ancon, with thy sea-fronting brow,
Own’d the great soldier’s name.
And all Picenum’s orchard-fields,
And the strong-forted Asculum yields:
And where, beyond high Apennine,
Clitumnus feeds the white, white kine;
And ’mid Pelignian hills—
Short time, with his Corfinian bands,
Stout Ænobarbus stiffly stands
Where urgent Cæsar wills!17
Flee, Pompey, flee! the ancient awe
Of magisterial rule and law,
Authority and state,
The Consul’s name, the Lictor’s rods,
The pomp of Capitolian gods,
Stem not the flooding fate.
Beneath the Volscian hills, and near
Where exiled Marius lurk’d in fear,
‘Mid stagnant Liris’ marshes, there
Breathe first in that luxurious lair
Where famous Hannibal lay;18
Nor tarry; while the chance is thine.
Hie o’er the Samnian Apennine
To the far Calabrian bay!
Wing thy sure speed! Who hounds thy path?
Fierce as the Furies in their wrath
The blood-stain’d wretch pursue,
He comes, Rome’s tempest-footed son,
Victor, but deeming nothing done
While aught remains to do.
Above Brundusium’s bosom’d bay
He stands, lashing the Adrian spray.
With piers of enterprise the sea
Her fleet-wing’d chariot trims for thee,
To the Greek coast to bear thee;
There, where Enipeus rolls his flood
Through storied fields made fat with blood,19
For fate’s last blow prepare thee.
There will thy dwindled hosts, increased
By kings and tetrarchs of the East,
And sons of swarthy Nile;
From Pontus and from Colchis far,
The gather’d ranks of motley war,
Let fortune seem to smile
A moment, that with sterner frown,
She, when she strikes, may strike thee down.
A flattering fool shall be thy guide,20
And hope shall whisper to thy pride
Things that may not befall.
Thy forward-springing wit shall boast
The numbers of thy counted host—
That pride may have a fall.
Hoar Pindus, from his rocky barriers,
Looks on thy ranks of gay-plumed warriors,
And sees an ominous sight:
The leafy tent for victory graced,
Foresnatching fate with impious haste
From gods that rule the fight.
Thus fools have perish’d; and thus thou,
Spurr’d to sheer death, art blinded now.
Feeble thy clouds of clattering horse
To dash his steady ordered force;
From twanging bow and sling
Dintless the missile hail is pour’d,
Where the Tenth Legion wields the sword,
And Cæsar leads the wing.21
’Tis done. And sire to son shall tell
What on Emathian plains befell,
A God-ordain’d disaster;
How justice dealt the even blow,
And Rome that laid the nations low
Herself hath found a master.
Oh, had thou known thyself to rule,
That train’d the world in thy stern school,
Fate might have gentlier dealt; but now
Thyself thy proper Fury, thou
Hast struck the avenging blow.
On sandy Afric’s treacherous shore,
Fresh from red Pharsaly’s streaming gore,
Lies Rome with Pompey low.
J. S. B.
Inverury, 1847.
Notes
15 The Rubicon, which is a small torrent, a little north of Rimini (Ariminum), flowing into the Hadriatic, was, at the time of Cæsar’s famous passage, swollen to a considerable stream by three days’ rain.—Lucan, i. 213-19.
16 “‘Hic,’ ait—‘hic pacem temerataque jura relinquo.
Te, Fortuna, sequor, procul hinc jam foedera sunto;
Credidunus Fatis, uterdum est judice bello.’”—Lucan, i. 227.
17 Cæsar met with no opposition in his march to Rome except from Domitius Ænobarbus, who was stationed at Corfinium, amid the Apennines, east of the Eucine lake. The line of march which Cæsar took, through Picenum, was, as Gibbon has remarked, calculated at once to clear his rear of the Pompeian party, and to frighten Pompey himself, not only out of Rome, but, as actually happened, out of Italy.
18 Pompey fled to Capua, passing the marshes of Minturnæ at the mouth of the Liris (now the Garigliano), and from thence over the Apennines, by the Via Appia, to Brundusium in the ancient Calabria.
19 An allusion to the battle of Cynoscephalæ, which subjected Macedonia to the Romans (b. c. 197.) The scene of this battle was on the same plain of Thessaly through which the Enipeus flows into the Peneus, passing by Pharsalus in its course. This alludes to the battle of Dyrrachium, where Pompey was successful for a moment, only to revive in his party that vain confidence and shallow conceit which was their original ruin.
20 Labienus, Cæsar’s lieutenant in the Gallic war; but who afterwards joined Pompey. He gave his new master bad advice.—Bellum Civile, iii.
21 See the order of battle of both parties.—Bellum Civile, iii. 68, 69.