• • AFTER VICTORY.
Now is- the time for drinking, now; Now; now; the dance,be fast and frees Once more to-day the gods allow Their feast and ancient.Pageantry.
Till now, the wine long stored at home 'Twas crime upon the board to set, While death to Roman rule and Rome • The frantic queen was plotting yet, Who, with her hero-train complete • Of . tainted eunuchs, set no bound . (Drunk with the cup of fortune sweet) ,.To dreaming, till she woke and found Scarce one of all her ships had 'seeped . The flames, and Caesar forced her back From fancied horrors serpent-shaped To sober fear tliat,"on the track From Italy (as scares a dove The hawk untender, or a hare The hunter in the snows above - • The Thracian plains) he still was there To chain the fateful thing abhorred, Who seeking death most royal, though A woman, ‘uailed not at the sword, Nor sailed to shores that none might know,
Bold with untroubled 'eyes to view Lost empire, brave to tease the mood Of angry serpents till she drew -- Their venom into all her blood,
FrOm death determined haughtier grown s Grudging, be sure, that she the prize Of those fierce galleys shoed 1 shown, Lofty though fall'n, to scornful eyes.
H. M.
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