)
I've past more bright and charmed hours
Than all earth's wisdom could have given.
Oh happy days, oh early friends,
How Life since then hath lost its flowers!
But yet--tho' Time _some_ foliage rends,
The stem, the Friendship, still is ours;
And long may it endure, as green
And fresh as it hath always been!
How I have wandered from my theme!
But where is he, that could return
To such cold subjects from a dream,
Thro' which these best of feelings burn?--
Not all the works of Science, Art,
Or Genius in this world are worth
One genuine sigh that from the heart
Friendship or Love draws freshly forth.
[1] Bermago--the birthplace, it is said, of Harlequin.
[2] Edward Tuite Dalton, the first husband of Sir John Stevenson's
daughter, the late Marchioness of Headfort.
[3] Such as those of Domenichino in the Palazza Borghese, at the
Capitol, etc.
[4] Sir John Stevenson.
EXTRACT XIII.
Rome.
_Reflections on reading Du Cerceau's Account of the Conspiracy of
Rienzi, in 1347.--The Meeting of the Conspirators on the Night of the 19th
of May.--Their Procession in the Morning to the Capitol.--Rienzi's
Speech_.
'Twas a proud moment--even to hear the words
Of Truth and Freedom mid these temples breathed,
And see once more the Forum shine with swords
In the Republic's sacred name unsheathed--
That glimpse, that vision of a brighter day
For his dear ROME, must to a Roman be,
Short as it was, worth ages past away
In the dull lapse of hopeless slavery.
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