ART AND NATURE.

THE COLISEUM.

LORD BYRON.

I Do remember me that in my youth
When I was wandering-upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's walls
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees that grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and interruptedly
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Began and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot, where the Cæsars dwelt
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths.
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;-
But the gladiator's bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers and the Augustan halls
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerities
Of ragged desolation, and filled up
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old, —
Those dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

THE COLISEUM.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

I CROSSED the Forum to the foot of the Palatine, and, ascending the Via Sacra, passed beneath the Arch of Titus. From this point, I saw below me the gigantic outline of the Coliseum, like a cloud resting upon the earth. As I descended the hillside, it grew more broad and high, - more definite in its form, and yet more grand in its dimensions, -till, from the vale in which it stands encompassed by three of the Seven Hills of Rome, — the Palatine, the Coelian, and the Esquiline, the majestic ruin in all its solitary grandeur "swelled vast to heaven."

A single sentinel was pacing to and fro beneath the