But, ministrant on clamorous battle-plains,
Sated my spirit with a strange delight.

She, leagued in love with the Empress-courtezan,
Who sway'd the counsels of a glutted spouse,
Whelm'd me in irredeemable disgrace,

And foul'd the lustre of untarnish'd act,
And summon'd me from conquest to despair.
Long years I crept through shame unmerited,
Humbled in peace, all glorious in war,—
And mighty only on the battle-field.
At last, when all barbarian multitudes
Rallied upon the Eastern capital,

Justinian call'd me forth from obloquy,
Like that crisp-pated Quintus from the plough,
And bade me save my country; and I went
And chased their armies to the wilderness,
And wrought a strong redemption for the land.
He crown'd me with all-noble recompense-
He met slight merit with benign reward-
He blinded me, and cast me forth to beg-
Poor fool!-or little recking future fame.

"Though slowly staggering in the vale of years, I shudder not at that all-victor Death,

Nor quail at fathomless eternity.

No storied tomb, uprear'd on hero-bones,
No great memorial of greater dead,
Shall signal ruin'd Belisarius.

Yet much I joy, seeing my backward years
Loom deep into the dead mist of the Past,

That I repent not aught which I have done.
I have not work'd my fall, but Destiny
And that serene pre-eminence of God.
Yet this I know, and with calamity

Grows trust, and all unshaken confidence,

That though men hold me poor, and blind, and

mean,

Cast down from honour, hopeless, desolate;

Yet, in those generations far to come,

When they that spurn me from their palaces
Shall slumber with the unremember'd dead,
My fame shall broaden in the stream of time,
Wide-circling from my death-plunge, and a rumour,
And glorious memory of glorious deeds--

My deeds-my deeds-shall ring through after

time."

F. M., 1858.

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES.

THE day was come: its earliest morn had brought His true disciples to the teacher's cell,

Who, gathering round the master of their thought, Wept him they loved so,well.

Yea, moving blindly in much heaviness,
And left amid perplexities alone,

They mourn'd as men, in a great wilderness,
Mourn when their guide is gone.

Remembering how, without reward or praise,
That temperate truth had drawn the hope of
Greece,

Leading to wisdom,-pleasant are her ways,

And all her paths are peace:

But sternly sent the arrogant to school,

And on false-seeming set the brand of shame ;

Looking beyond the pomp of petty rule,

To whence true honour came.

So men arraign'd the saint of blasphemy;

The sage arraign'd they of corrupting youth;
Arraign'd the saint whose life was purity—
The sage whose speech was truth.

But rather in that chance he did rejoice,
Yea, set to blessings that calamity ;
And, doubting nothing, made heroic choice-
As he had lived-to die.

Nor bated aught of blameless innocence,
Nor courted any pity of the strong;
But, dauntless ever in a great defence,
He cried against the wrong.

Nor might he not foreshadow One to be,
Dragg'd downward by the race He came to save,
Through bitterer scorn, unjuster contumely,

Down to a nobler grave.

Or as that cloud of faithful witnesses
March'd cheerfully on torture and on sword,
Expecting after any agonies

The coming of the Lord :

So look'd he on his judges, witting well
Their sorest penalty must bring release
In such an end as theirs who nobly fell
Before the gates of Greece.

Who pass'd in blood without applause or crown, From that loud day to where we cannot see : Such loss their gain, and such defeat renown, Such death their victory.

Likewise even now did his own peace rebuke

In prison his moved friends for fruitless fears; Then spake the sage, when that accustom'd look Had set a truce to tears :

66

Upon their death the silver swans rejoice, Meeting that God to whom their lives belong, And pour the glory of their treasured voice In floods of jubilant song :

"Shall I not too be glad, who pass to range

In some best place with the great dead, my peers, Proceeding through all form of nobler change Down unimagined years?

"For I believe I am not wholly dust,

But somewhere, somewhere, with diviner powers, They greatly live, the spirits of the just,

A larger life than ours.

"For we abiding in infirmity,

In fleshly tabernacles groan forlorn, Expecting, till on this mortality

It break, the perfect morn.