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CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
[CANTO IV.
LXXXVIII.
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome![1]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[2] they feared,
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
- ↑ [The bronze "Wolf of the Capitol" in the Palace of the Conservators is unquestionably ancient, belonging to the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century B.C., and probably of Græco-Italian workmanship. The twins, as Winckelmann pointed out (see Hobhouse's note), are modern, and were added under the impression that this was the actual bronze described by Cicero, Cat., iii. 8, and Virgil, Æn., viii. 631. (See Monuments de l' Art Antique, par Olivier Rayet, Paris, 1884, Livraison 11, Planche 7.)]
- ↑ [The Roman "things" whom the world feared, set the fashion of shedding their blood in the pursuit of glory. The nations, of modern Europe, "bastard" Romans, have followed their example.]
