A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd; Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd. Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd? Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.
But when the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head; When the light shines serene but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye tread.
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; "When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; "And when Rome falls-the World." From our own land Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call Ancient; and these three mortal things are still On their foundations, and unalter'd all; Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, The World-the same wide den-of thieves, or
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime- Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, From Jove to Jesus-spared and bless'd by time; Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods His way through thorns to ashes-glorious dome! Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods Shiver upon thee-sanctuary and home Of art and piety-Pantheon!-pride of Rome!
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! Despoil'd yet perfect, with thy circle spreads A holiness appealing to all hearts-
To art a model; and to him who treads Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those Who worship, here are altars for their beads; And they who feel for genius may repose
Their eyes on honour'd forms, whose busts around them
There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again! Two forms are slowly shadow'd on my sight- Two insulated phantoms of the brain :
It is not so; I see them full and plain- An old man, and a female young and fair, Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:-but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?
Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where on the heart and from the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves-
the fruit be yet?—I know not-Cain was Eve's.
But here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift :-it is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire While in those warm and lovely veins the fire Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher Than Egypt's river :-from that gentle side
Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide.
The starry fable of the milky way Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray, And sacred Nature triumphs more in this Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss Where sparkle distant worlds :-Oh, holiest nurse! No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.
Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear'd on high, Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, Colossal copyist of deformity,
Whose travell'd phantasy from the far Nile's Enormous model, doom'd the artist's toils
To build for giants, and for his vain earth His shrunken ashes raise this dome: How smiles The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!
But lo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell-
Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle- Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell The hyæna and the jackal in their shade; I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd;
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