Page:Two Poems - Browning and Browning (1854).djvu/7



Shall we boast of empire, where Time with ruin sits commissioned? In God's liberal blue air Peter's dome itself looks wizened;

And the mountains, in disdain, Gather back their lights of opal Prom the dumb, despondent plain, Heaped with jawbones of a people.

Lordly English, think it o'er, Cæsar's doing is all undone! You have cannons on your shore, And free parliaments in London,

Princes' parks, and merchants' homes, Tents for soldiers, ships for seamen,— Ay, but ruins worse than Rome's In your pauper men and women.