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Experiment 5

from "The Fall Of Rome" (I)

page 51

from "The Fall Of Rome" (I)

Alas!
For the granite walls
Are fallen to heaps of sand
And the strong turrets
To hills like burial-mounds.
The revenues are uncollected,
The slaves have turned to brigandage.
The Empire's troops
Are barbarian tribes, the generals
Talk with the speech of dogs
And their followers know no Latin.
The fertile hills flow to the sea
And the crops burn in the sun.
Then let us wail and moan,
For alas! The World is sick;
The she-wold descends from the pedestal
And crunches Romulus in her jaws,
The eagles have flown from the standards
To pick the bones of the starveling dead.