The Daily Empire

THE DAILY EMPIRE.
H. E. ROBINSON,
PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
BY WILLIAM H. LYTLE.

I am dying, Egypt, dying
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast.
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast:
Let thine arm, oh Queen, enfold me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Listen to the great heart secrets
Thou and thou alone must hear

Though my scarred and veteran legions
Their
Bear their eagles high no more,
And my wrecked and scattered galleys
Lie
Strew dark Actium's fatal shore;
Though no glittering guards surround me,
Prompt to do their master's will
I must perish like a Roman,
Like the great Triumvir still.

Let not Caesar's servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
'Twas no foeman's arm that felled him
'Twas his own that struck the blow—
His who, pillowed on thy bosom,
Turned aside from glory's ray—
His who drunk with thy caresses
Madly threw a world away

Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at Rome,
Where the noble spouse Octavia,
Weeps within her widowed home;
Seek her, say the Gods bear witness
Altars, augurs, circling wings,
That her blood, with mine commingled
Yet shall mount the throne of kings

And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian:
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors,
With the splendors of thy smile
Give the Caesar crowns and arches
Let his brow the laurel twine,
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs
Triumphing in love like thine

I am dying, Egypt, dying—
Hark to the insulting foeman's cry:
They are coming—quick, my falchion,
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah, no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell:

*The late Brigadier-General Wm. H. Lytle, the Chevalier Bayard of the Western armies, who was killed at the battle of Chickamauga