The Younger Brutus.
When in the Thracian dust uprooted lay,
In ruin vast, the strength of Italy,
And Fate had doomed Hesperia's valleys green,
And Tiber's shores,
The trampling of barbarian steeds to feel,
And from the leafless groves,
On which the Northern Bear looks down,
Had called the Gothic hordes,
That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords;
Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood,
Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night;
Resolved on death, the gods implacable
Of heaven and hell he chides,
And smites the listless, drowsy air
With his fierce cries of anger and despair.
"O foolish virtue, empty mists,
The realms of shadows, are thy schools,
And at thy heels repentance follows fast.
...