Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Veii

Veii

By John Edmund Reade (1800–1870)

(From Italy)

I LEANED against a gray and mouldering wall,

Last wreck of Troy-like Veii: the bird

Nestled amid its flower-crowned coronal;

Inward tradition’s cloudy voice I heard:

I thought of when the twin-born cities stirred

Contending in time’s womb for earliest birth,

While fate had stamped the irrevocable word:

Death-doomed the one, the other ruling earth,

To prove the moral drawn from fame and fortune’s worth.