arts whose

Bringing forth the most plaintive strain mortals

That the great illumination might stand, beside which

Nero won the utmost of all he craved —

To awe the after-ages so long as the stars glitter,

Perfection would be called science and skill,

Ever heard, out of a flame that stuns the eyes blind,

All illuminations after it would be counted small —

Burning Rome, to strike out an original fancy.

The fire blazed up in her by night, while

A flame rising up from every quarter,

It crept on, swelling, ablaze,

It gathered in all the quarters of Rome,

The buildings come toppling down, and the walls,

And human creatures, bewildered, stunned,

A plunging into the blaze — all but a few,

And the beasts of prey broke loose, never slackening —

Her nation lay sleeping, drowsy and drunken.

Moving now softly, now at a gallop, now striding across.

Meeting another in the embrace of the glare.

In an inferno that smelts bodies utterly.

Hurling itself onward, while the statues crash down in embers.

They braved the horror, and evil was that plunging.

They made the corpses a bridge across the burning.

It met nothing but with biting and rending and breaking.

They charged to kill, then broke and fled,

Flesh in plenty, roasting round about them,

Swaying along, her blood pouring out,

The mother runs, singing in her terror,

And the graybeard crashes down as the stallion crashes in

The capital of the world was destroyed, and yet

...I am not grieved for that people — and is

Panics coursing along every path.

Yet they refused, after the long toil of fasting, to break their fast.

With the stagger of a bleeding man, as though of wine.

While her children weep around her in dread.

A drowning, while the blaze spares him no ruin.

The survivors found in that nothing strange.

Any heart to be found that burns for scoundrels?

He is not fit for a pleasant life,

It was Rome that made its own Nero,

She brought him to the throne unearned, and he turned tyrant.

...Who would blame Nero? I lay the blame on

A nation which, had it risen against him for one hour,

Every people are the makers of their own Nero,

Whoever finds it too hard to live free.

And he was the worst of the people, whatever evil there was.

Every kingship that comes unearned goes for nothing.

A nation which, had it glowered at him, would have sent him reeling back.

He would have desisted from her at once, and been driven off.

Be he called Caesar, or be he called Chosroes.