midnight
We can not accomplish the latter , and if we try I fear we shall miss everything . ' My mother agreed fully with him . And so , many evenings at home ; father would read to us pathetic legends and stirring tales of ancient Roman life ; and we would often go and sit amidst the earth-covered ruins on the Palatine . Here , children , I have heard your own dear father more than once repeat , as only he could , Byron 's graphic lines : -- `` Cypress and ivy , weed and wall-flower grown , Matted and mass 'd together ; hillocks heap 'd On what were chambers , arch crushed , column strewn In fragments ; choked-up vaults , and frescoes steep 'd In subterranean damps , where the owl peep 'd Deeming it midnight . `` He used to love to repeat bits of poetry everywhere , just as Margery does . `` We climbed the Colosseum walls and sat there for hours dreaming of what it once was -- and so we went all over the city -- until I really think I lived in ancient Rome a part of the time . Often did I weep over the tragic fate of Roman heroes and matrons as I was in the places sacred to their history , so deeply impressed was I by the reality of the past life of Rome .