As though ten centuries were not

Imprisoned in thy shining cases!

Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days

Of grateful rest; the week of leisure,

The journey lapped in autumn haze,

The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,

The morning ride, the noonday halt,

The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,

And then the dim, brown, columned vault,

With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts

That scrape the sky, their only tenant

The jay-bird that in frolic casts

From some high yard his broad blue pennant.

I see the Indian files that keep

Their places in the dusty heather,

The "modern Pope's," "the later Byron's,"

He saw the age of sacred trees

And Druid groves and mystic larches;

And saw from forest domes like these

The builder bring his Gothic arches.

And must thou, foundling, still forego
Thy heritage and high ambition,
To lie full lowly and full low,

Adjusted to thy new condition?

Not hidden in the drifted snows,

But under ink-drops idly spattered,

And leaves ephemeral as those

That on thy woodland tomb were scattered.

Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak

The moral of thy simple story:

Though life is all that thou dost seek,

And age alone thy crown of glory, Not thine the only germs that fail

The purpose of their high creation, If their poor tenements avail

For worldly show and ostentation.