She looked in the eyes of the startled crowd;
Calmly she gazed around;

Her voice was neither low nor loud,

But it rang like her sword on the ground.

"Spartans," she said, and her woman's face
Flushed out both pride and shame,
"I ask, by the memory of your race,
Are ye worthy of your name?

"Ye have bidden us seek new hearths and Beyond the reach of the foe;

graves,

And now, by the dash of the blue sea waves,
We swear that we will not go!

"Is the name of Pyrrhus to blanch your cheeks? Shall he burn, and kill, and destroy?

Are ye not sons of the deathless Greeks
Who fired the gates of Troy?

"What though his feet have scathless stood.

In the rush of the Punic foam?

Though his sword be red to its hilt with the blood

That has beat at the heart of Rome?

"Brothers and sons! we have reared you men; Our walls are the ocean swell;

Our winds blow keen down the rocky glen
Where the staunch Three Hundred fell.

"Our hearts are drenched in the wild sea flow,
In the light of the hills and the sky;
And the Spartan women, if need be so,
Will teach the men to die.

"We are brave men's mothers, and brave men's wives;

We are ready to do and dare;

We are ready to man your walls with our lives, And string your bows with our hair.

"Let the young and brave lie down to-night, And dream of the brave old dead,

Their broad shields bright for to-morrow's fight, Their swords beneath their head.

"Our breasts are better than bolts and bars;
We neither wail nor weep;

We will light our torches at the stars,
And work while our warriors sleep.

"We hold not the iron in our own blood
Viler than strangers' gold;

The memory of our motherhood
Is not to be bought and sold.

"Shame to the traitor heart that springs
To the faint soft arms of peace,

If the Roman eagle shook his wings
At the very gates of Greece.

"Ask not the mothers who gave you birth
To bid you turn and flee;
When Sparta is banished from the earth
Her women can die and be free."

PROLOGUE TO CATO.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold; For this the tragic muse first trod the stage, Commanding tears to stream through every age: Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, And foes to virtue wondered how they wept. Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move The hero's glory and the virgin's love; In pitying love, we but our weakness show, And wild ambition well deserves its woe.

Here tears shall flow from a more generous

cause,

Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardor rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
What Plato taught, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heav'n itself surveys:
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state!
While Cato gives his little senate laws,

What bosom beats not in his country's cause?

Who sees him act, but envies ev'ry deed?

Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?

Ev'n when proud Cæsar, midst triumphal cars, The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars, Ignobly vain, and impotently great,

Showed Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state; As her dead father's rev'rend image past,

The pomp was darkened, and the day o'ercast, The triumph ceased-tears gushed from ev'ry

eye,

The world's great victor passed unheeded by ; Her last good man dejected Rome adored, And honored Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.

Pope.

CATO'S SENATE.

Cato. Fathers, we

once again are met in

council.

Cæsar's approach has summoned us together,
And Rome attends her fate from our resolves ;
How shall we treat this bold aspiring man?
Success stills follows him, and backs his crimes:
Pharsalia gave him Rome. Egypt has since
Received his yoke, and the whole Nile is Cæsar's.
Why should I mention Juba's overthrow,
And Scipio's death? Numidia's burning sands
Still smoke with blood. 'Tis time we should de-

cree

What course to take.

Our foe advances on us,

And envies us even Libya's sultry deserts.

Fathers, pronounce your thoughts are they still

fixed

To hold it out and fight it to the last?

Or are your hearts subdued at length, and wrought

By time and ill success to a submission?
Sempronius, speak.

Sempronius. My voice is still for war.
Gods! can a Roman senate long debate
Which of the two to choose, slav'ry or death?
No, let us rise at once, gird on our swords,
And at the head of our remaining troops
Attack the foe, break through the thick array
Of his thronged legions, and charge home upon
him.

Perhaps some arm, more lucky than the rest, May reach his heart, and free the world from bondage.

Rise, fathers, rise! 'tis Rome demands your help; Rise, and revenge her slaughtered citizens,

Or share their fate! The corpse of half her sen

Manure the fields of Thessaly, while we

Sit here delib'rating in cold debates

If we should sacrifice our lives to honor,
Or wear them out in servitude and chains.
Rouse up for shame! Our brothers of Pharsalia
Point at their wounds, and cry aloud, To battle!
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are
slow,

And Scipio's ghost walks unrevenge among us!
Cato. Let not a torrent of imp
eal