Alia-801's Gladiator Fansite: Poetry

There are a number of poems about gladiators, the Colosseum, and Rome which have been written through history. Some have really touched me, and here's one of them for now...(more to follow when I get chance!):

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause,
As man was slaughter'd by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because
Such are the bloody Circus' genial laws
And the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres--where the chief actors rot.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers aging
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low--
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him--he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won

He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother--he their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday--
All this rush'd with his blood--Shall he die
And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire.

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,
My voice sounds much -- and fall the stars' faint rays
On the arena void -- seats crush'd -- walls bow'd--
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

A ruin -- yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd;
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all -- years -- man -- have reft away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
When the light shine serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead;
Heroes have trod this spot -- 'tis on their dust ye tread.

'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
'When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
'And when Rome falls--the World.' From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall.
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient, and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unalter'd all
Rome and her ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, CXXXIX-CXLV,by Lord Byron

Last updated 20 Mar 2005 Page designed by: alia-801
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