And round thine altar's mouldering stones are born
Mysterious harpings, wild as ever crept
From him who waked Aurora every morn,
And sad as those he sung her till she slept!
A thousand, and a thousand years have swept
O'er thee, who wert a moral from thy spring --
A wreck in youth!—nor vainly hast thou kept
Thy lyre! Olympia's soul is on the wing,
And a new Iphitus has waked beneath its string!
BY THOMAS DOUBLEDAY, ESQ.
ONCE, by the dusk light of an ancient hall,
I saw a Horologe. Its minutes fell
Upon the roused ear, with a drowsy knell,
That he who passed attended to the call.
I looked and lo! five antics over all.
One moved, and four were motionless. The one Was scythed and bald-head Time; and he moved on, Sweep after sweep-and each a minute's fall.
-The four were kings.
And ermined crowns.
Sceptres they bore, and globes,
Before that old Man dim
They stood, but not in joy. At sight of Time,
They had stiffened into statues in their robes;
Fear-petrified. Let no man envy him
Who smiles at that grave Homily sublime!
MORN on the waters!-and, purple and bright,
Bursts on the billows the flushing of light;
O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;
Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,
And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale;
The winds come around her, in murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice, as they bear her along.
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in the shrouds :
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters,-away, and away!
Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her, and sunshine on high-
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,
Oh! there be hearts that are breaking below!
Night on the waves!—and the moon is on high,
Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!
Look to the waters !-asleep on their breast,
Seems not to the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,
Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!
Who-as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And souls that are smitten lie bursting within?
Who-as he watches her silently gliding-
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts which are parted and broken for ever?
Or deems that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's grave?
'Tis thus with our life: while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song!
Gaily we glide, in the gaze of the world,
With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled;
All gladness and glory, to wandering eyes,
Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs :-
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,
As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears;
And the withering thoughts which the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles lie burning below;
Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore,
Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er! Literary Souvenir.
LORD of the dreary Avon, rear sublime
Thy cloud-encircled head, where late I hung
In rapture, while the legendary chime
Of viewless harps from every valley rung;
Peopling that unimaginable hour
Of fancy, with the carols that were sung
For battle, when against the storm of power
And conquest, long the bards and warriors stood
For Cambria, and the amaranthine flower
Of liberty was watered with their blood.
High strains-but now to a diviner string
Awake ye glens; be vocal, rock and flood;
Shake, Snowdon, to thy base; while angels sing
The Sire, the Spirit, the Redeemer King!
IN Egypt's centre, when the world was young,
My statue soared aloft,- -a man-shaped tower,
O'er hundred-gated Thebes, by Homer sung,
And built by Apis' and Osiris' power.
When the sun's infant eye more brightly blazed,
I marked the labours of unwearied Time;
And saw, by patient centuries up-raised,
Stupendous temples, obelisks sublime!
Hewn from the rooted rock, some mightier mound, Some new colossus more enormous springs,
So vast, so firm, that, as I gazed around,
I thought them, like myself, eternal things.
Then did I mark in sacerdotal state, Psammis the king, whose alabaster tomb, (Such the inscrutable decrees of fate),
Now floats athwart the sea to share my doom.
O Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world!
Still shalt thou soar, its everlasting boast;
When lo! the Persian standards were unfurled,
And fierce Cambyses led the invading host.
Where from the East a cloud of dust proceeds,
A thousand bannered suns at once appear;
Nought else was seen;-but sound of neighing steeds,
And faint barbaric music met mine ear.
Onward they march, and foremost I descried
A cuirassed Grecian band, in phalanx dense,
Around them thronged, in oriental pride,
Commingled tribes-a wild magnificence.
Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show,
Which Egypt's children worship and obey;
They fear to strike a sacrilegious blow,
And fall-a pious, unresisting prey.
Then, Havoc leaguing with infuriate Zeal,
Palaces, temples, cities are o'erthrown;
Apis is stabbed!-Cambyses thrusts the steel,
And shuddering Egypt heaved a general groan!
The firm Memnonium mocked their feeble power, Flames round its granite columns hissed in vain,— The head of Isis frowning o'er each tower,
Looked down with indestructible disdain.
Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace:-
Beneath my shade a wondering army flocked,
With force combined, they wrenched me from my base,
And earth beneath the dread concussion rocked.
Nile from his banks receded with affright,
The startled Sphinx long trembled at the sound; While from each pyramid's astounded height,
The loosened stones slid rattling to the ground.
I watched, as in the dust supine I lay,
The fall of Thebes,-as I had marked its fame,— Till crumbling down, as ages rolled away,
Its site a lonely wilderness became !
The throngs that choaked its hundred gates of yore;
Its fleets, its armies, were no longer seen;
Its priesthood's pomp,-its Pharaoh's were no more,—
All-all were gone-as if they ne'er had been!
Deep was the silence now, unless some vast
And time-worn fragment thundered to its base;
Whose sullen echoes, o'er the desart cast,
Died in the distant solitude of space.
|