And each misshapen rent by ruin made
Sleeps in the kind obscurity of shade-
Her fairy pile imagination rears,
And memory loves to lift the veil of years.
H! passing beautiful is this wild spot,
Tombs, temples, dwellings, all alike forgot,
One sea of sunlight far around them spread,
And skies of sapphire mantling overhead,
It seems no work of man's creative hand;
By labour wrought as wavering fancy planned,
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone:
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
Where erst Athena held her rites divine,
Not saintly-gray, like many a minster fane,
That crowns the hill, and consecrates the plain;
But rosy-red, as if the blush of dawn,
That first beheld them were not yet withdrawn,
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
Which man deemed old a thousand years ago;
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city half as old as Time.
sooth it seems right awful and sublime
To gaze by moonlight on the shattered pile
Of an old abbey struggling still with time;
The gray owl hooting from its rents the while;
And tottering stones, as wakened by the sound,
Crumbling from arch and battlement around,
Urging dread echoes from the gloomy aisle,
To sink more silent still. The very ground
In desolation's garment doth appear-
The lapse of age and mystery profound ;—
We gaze on wrecks of ornamented stones,
On tombs whose sculptures half-erased appear,
And rank weeds battening over human bones,
Till even one's shadow seems a thing to fear!
UT stay! these walls-these ivy-clad arcades-
These mouldering plinths-these sad and blackened shafts--
These vague entablatures-this crumbling frieze—
These shattered cornices-this wreck-this ruin-
These stones-alas! these gray stones-are they all,
All of the famed, and the colossal, left
By the corrosive hours to fate and me?
"Not all," the echoes answer me, “not all!
Prophetic sounds and loud arise for ever
From us and from all ruin unto the wise,
As melody from Memnon to the sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men-we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds;
We are not impotent-we pallid stones;
Not all our power is gone, not all our fame,
Not all the magic of our high renown,
Not all the wonder that encircles us,
Not all the mysteries that in us lie,
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment,
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."
HE still and soft autumnal eve
Descends in beauty so serene,
That the soothed spirit scarce can grieve
Above the fading scene;
Where pale and saddening in decline,
Above the sere and yellow bowers,
Thou ivy-robed, time-hallowed shrine,
I hail thy mouldering towers.
Amid the summer's blooming reign 'Tis sad to gaze upon decay,
Which mars, as doth a funeral train
The glad and glorious day.
But while the year thus droops and dies,
Around thy walls so worn and wan,
The scene and season harmonize,
And nature mocks not man.
Yet fast as thy frail turrets fade
And moulder from their place of pride,
How oft beneath their sullen shade
Youth, love, and hope have died!
But thou art here, thy form appears,
Even as of yore it used to be-
Alas! our few and fleeting years
Scarce work a change on thee.
The scene around on which I gaze
Recalls life's summer-morning's dream;
The music of departed days
Still murmurs in thy stream;
While love and friendship's voices long
Have passed to silence like the strain. Breathed in some sweet, heart-touching song We never hear again.
But nature's harp hath lost no string,
The waving woods and lonely sea,
Upon the living ear still fling
Their solemn harmony:
Yet changeless as in days gone by,
Though that wild music warbles on,
To me the breezes seem to sigh,
The waters seem to moan.
Nor only nature's scenes of grief
Forlorn remembrances recall
When droops away the yellow leaf
From autumn's coronal;
But the green earth and vernal air,
Each bud and blossom of the spring,
Wake thoughts of things more sweet and fair,
The flowers she cannot bring!
PERE let me muse on this moss-woven stone;
Silence and night surround me-star-beams fall
Through rifted arches and on columns lone;
More grand this pile than Eblis' awful hall;
What scenes of pleasure passed it doth recall!
While Fancy views it in its pristine day,
Throws back from buried time the darkening pall,
The Caesars live again, and, reckless, gay,
Thousands within this dome keep Roman holiday.
The standard flies, with life the galleries teem,
Mixed in one mighty throng the fair and bold:
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