Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/438

396 LXXXVIII.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! N25

She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart

The milk of conquest yet within the dome

Where, as a monument of antique art,

Thou standest:—Mother of the mighty heart,

Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,

Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,

And thy limbs black with lightning—dost thou yet

Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

LXXXIX.

Thou dost;—but all thy foster-babes are dead—

The men of iron; and the World hath reared

Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled

In imitation of the things they feared,

And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,

At apish distance; but as yet none have,