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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=415743" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Goths in Campania (Placidia, in the Tent of Adolphus.)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I am not Roman when he looks upon me<br>With those mild eyes of unaccustomed blue;<br>Woman, not Roman, when his strong embraces<br>Crush me with rugged promises of love.<br>Time was, ere yet the Gothic trump had broken<br>The dream of that inviolate majesty<br>Whose very sleep was empire—Rome its pillow—<br>Its couch, the world—its overhanging, heaven;<br>Time was, when only words of courtly homage<br>Brought to mine ear the import of such praise,<br>As had bestirred Divinity to wonder<br>That men should deem it of so high account,<br>When careful speech of long premeditation<br>Lost grace and aptitude in present awe;<br>When lips, late ruddy with the blood of Caesars,<br>Grew white in rash petition for such boons<br>As gods had smiled at—unrewarding favour,<br>A word, a look, yea, even indifference,<br>As if in me the fear of adverse fortune<br>Had recognized some godhead of caprice.<br>But when the sun shone in the palace garden,<br>And May was in the roses and in me,<br>And all my soul cried out for what it had not,<br>To crown the life of summer and my own,<br>Honorius' sister, Theodosius' daughter,<br>Placidia, I, of Roman maidens first,<br>Had welcomed fellowship and clasped intrusion;—<br>Yet no man asked my heart, no man my love.<br>None to the longing of my life made answer;<br>None broke the still Imperial solitude<br>With sweet audacity of hardy wooing;<br>None wronged the princess by the woman's right.<br>Such time had been, until this bold Adolphus<br>With warrior-laugh o'erleaped prerogative,<br>And caught me for a spoil beneath his buckler,<br>The princess captive, but the woman free.<br>A dreary code of law inscribed in purple<br>Had been the record of Placidia's years,<br>But that this Goth from out the Boreal lustre<br> <br>Of his blue eye shed heav'n upon the page,<br>And wrote in crimson characters of triumph<br>The story of a glad captivity.<br>For in restraint of foot I leaped to rescue<br>From golden chains and regal servitude;<br>And this my durance is a fond redemption<br>That makes me free to love, and to be loved.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>Yet there are moments, when as now he slumbers<br>Beside my feet, 'mid these disorder'd spoils<br>That make my prison-tent a Roman ruin—<br>Fierce moments of resurgent memory,<br>Full of rebuke of race and name forsaken,<br>And peopled with the spirits of the past.<br>Oh, it doth wrench me when his heedless fingers,<br>Circling the chalice in Falernian dreams—<br>The golden chalice that my father drank of,<br>Enriched with his own emblems, priceless work,<br>Gazing whereon his well-instructed spirit<br>Enhanced the vintage with the pride of art—<br>Relax and glide adown the rare embossment,<br>Until they touch that laurelled head, whose nod,<br>More than of Jove, shook not Olympus only,<br>But Jove himself, and all his kindred gods.<br>Then, daughter, sister, princess, rise within me,<br>A trinity abhorrent of itself—<br>That other self, which, when Adolphus sleepeth,<br>Sleeps, and, when he awaketh, wakes to him.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>Why should the spirit of my father vex me?<br>Or what allegiance owe I unto him<br>Who dwells apart, inglorious in Ravenna,<br>And could not, if he would, renew my state?<br>I see them not, and wherefore should I deem me<br>So much beholden to the unbeheld?<br>I hear them not; shall I be answerable<br>To irresponsive death and voiceless sloth?<br>They touch me not; can unembracing shadow<br>With close assurance compass me about?<br>Nor eye, nor ear, nor any sense declares them,<br>Unseen, unechoing, uncomforting:<br>But eye, and ear, and every sense is captive,<br>And thrall for ever to the comely Goth.<br> <br>Why should the spirit of my father vex me?<br>Behold, I give to him a worthier son!<br>And though he be barbarian who woos me,<br>The Roman bride shall wed his heart to Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>One thing I owe—beyond all ransom precious—<br>To father, brother, and Imperial name,<br>The chastity that makes me worth the winning,<br>A virgin love unstained of force or guile.<br>For this I thank thee, Theodosius, father;<br>For this, Honorius, thy fraternal name;<br>Nor thee the less, thou sleeping soul of honour,<br>That no barbarian art in sense of law.<br>For this, to silk and purple, crowns historic,<br>Goblets of gold and priceless spoil of pearl—<br>To all the glories of the cunning workman,<br>Sculptured or graven, or inlaid with gems—<br>To all the glittering legacies of triumph,<br>And hoarded trophies of a thousand years—<br>To all the wealth of harvest, pasture, vintage,<br>To corn and cattle, oil, and spice, and wine—<br>Yea, to the sacred things of God, most welcome!<br>Since thou hast kept me sacred, even from thee.<br>The noon consumes me in the thick pavilion,<br>Yet I am fain of close-drawn solitude,<br>Lest I should look upon the godless riot,<br>That, once seen, haunts me like a dream of shame<br>For all around the large-limbed Goths were lying<br>Beneath the plane-trees—yet but half-perceived<br>'Mid soft entanglement of arms and tresses<br>By captive beauty wreathed around its lords;<br>The pride of Romans, daughters of great houses,<br>Hiding their faces from my pitying gaze<br>In hideous refuge of barbarian bosoms . . .<br>God pardon them the wrong He hindered not!<br>God take my thanks for what is more than empire,<br>And speed the warrior whom no greedy haste<br>Hath spurred beyond the pace of loyal loving,<br>The pure caress, and broken utterance<br>Of mingling tongues half-learnt in march of conquest—<br>To which the ordered flow of Roman speech<br>Is feeble—rich in sweetest hesitations,<br>And wishful voids of tongueless eloquence.<br>He stirs, and this pavilion's girth becometh<br>My orb of lands, and hallowed round of love.<br> <br>He wakes, and country is a dream forgotten:<br>Where thou, Adolphus, art, there is my Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Brunton+Stephens">James Brunton Stephens</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=415743" data-title="The Goths in Campania (Placidia, in the Tent of Adolphus.) de James Brunton Stephens" data-description="I.

I am not Roman when he looks upon me
With those mild eyes of unaccustomed blue;
Woman, not Roman, when his strong embraces
Crush me with rugged promises of love.
Time was, ere yet the Gothic trump had broken
The dream of that inviolate majesty..."></div>
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