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20 Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
 * Remembered now in sadness.
 * But, oh! how much more changed,
 * How gloomier is the contrast
 * Of human nature there!

Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around—
 * Then, shuddering, meets his own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
 * A cowled and hypocritical monk
 * Prays, curses, and deceives.


 * Spirit! ten thousand years
 * Have scarcely past away,

Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons,
 * Wakes the unholy song of war,
 * Arose a stately city,

Metropolis of the western continent:
 * There, now, the mossy column-stone,

Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,
 * Which once appeared to brave
 * All, save its country's ruin;
 * There the wide forest scene,

Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
 * Of gardens long run wild,

Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps
 * Chance in that desart has delayed,

Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
 * Yet once it was the busiest haunt,

Whither, as to a common centre, flocked