The following appeared in the Daily Chronicle of the 4th ult. languid audience, met to seo The last act of the tragedy On that terrific stage afar Where burning towns the footlights are,—O listless Europe, day by day Callously sitting out the play So sat, with loveless countenance cold, Round the arena, Rome of old.
Pain, and the ebb of life's red tide, So, with a calm regard, she eyed, Her gorgeous vesture, million-pearled, Splashed with the blood of half the world, High was her glory's noon: as yeh She had not dreamed her sun could set As yet she had not dreamed how soon Shadows should vex her glory's noon, Another's pangs she counted nought Of human hearts she took no thought But God, at nightfall, in her ear "Thundered His thought exceeding clear, Perchance in tempest and in blight, On Europe, too, shall fall the night She sees the victim overborne, By worse than ravening lions torn, She sees, she hears, with soul unstirred, And lifts no hand, and speaks no word, But vaunts a brow like theirs who deem Men's wrongs a phrase, men's right a dream.
Yet haply she shall learn, too late, In some blind hurricane of Fate, How fierily alive the things She held as f aginings, And, though circuitous and obscure, The feet of Nemesis how sure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.