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VÆ VICTIS
They reached the wall, and nowise strange it seemeTo find the gates unguarded and open wide;They climbed the shoulder, and meet enough they deemedThe black that shrouded the seaward rampart's sideAnd veiled in drooping gloom the turrets' pride;But this was nought, for suddenly down the slopeThey saw the harbour, and sense within them died;Keel nor mast was there, rudder nor rope;It lay like a sea-hawk's eyry spoiled of life and hope.
Beyond, where dawn was a glittering carpet, rolledFrom sky to shore on level and endless seas,Hardly their eyes discerned in a dazzle of goldThat here in fifties, yonder in twos and threes,The ships they sought, like a swarm of drowning beesBy a wanton gust on the pool of a mill-dam hurled,Floated forsaken of life-giving tide and breeze,Their oars broken, their sails for ever furled,For ever deserted the bulwarks that guarded the wealth of the world.
A moment yet, with breathing quickly drawnAnd hands agrip, the Carthaginian folkStared in the bright untroubled face of dawn,And strove with vehement heaped denial to chokeTheir sure surmise of fate's impending stroke;