TH That Heaven to living things imparts, Are not exclusively possess'd By human hearts! A Parrot from the Spanish main, Full young and early caged, came o'er With bright wings to the bleak domain Of Mulla's shore. The spicy groves where he had won For these he changed the smoke of turf, His golden eye. But, petted, in our climate cold, He lived and chatter'd many a day; Until with age, from green and gold His wings grew grey. At last, when blind, and seeming dumb, He hail'd the bird in Spanish speech; Or where the denser grove receives Beneath some patriarchal tree A slumberous sound,—a sound that brings The feelings of a dream, As of innumerable wings, As, when a bell no longer swings, O'er meadow, lake, and stream. And dreams of that which cannot die, Dreams that the soul of youth engage HERE is now to be placed on his trial before you one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning, and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted, I mean Caius Verres. If that sentence is passed upon him, which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public; but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point,-viz., to make it apparent to all the world that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment. To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quæstorship, the first public employment he held, exhibit but one continued scene of villanies! Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army P |