Thus fair, of old, Euphrates rolled,
By Babylon's imperial site:
The lute's soft swell, with magic spell,
Breathed rapture on the listening night:
Love-whispering youths and maidens fair
In festal pomp assembled there,
Where to the stream's responsive moan
The desert-gale now sighs alone.
Still changeless, through the fertile plain,
Araxes, loud-resounding, flows,
Where gorgeous despots fixed their reign
And Chil-minar's proud domes arose.
High on his gem-emblazoned throne
Sate kneeling Persia's earthly god:
Fair slaves and satraps round him shone,
And nations trembled at his nod:
The mighty voice of Asia's fate
Went forth from every golden gate.
Now pensive steps the wrecks explore,
That skirt the solitary shore :
The time-worn column mouldering falls,
And tempests rock the roofless walls.
Perchance, when many a distant year,+
Urged by the hand of fate, has flown,
"The plain of Persepolis is watered by the great river Araxes or Bendemir. The ancient palace of the kings of Persia, called by the inhabitants Chil-minar, i. e., forty columns, is situated at the foot of the mountain: the walls of this stately building are still standing on three sides; and it has the mountain on the east."-UNIVERSAL HISTORY.
The days, that swiftly-circling run,
May see on Britain's western sun
Portentous darkness rise;
And hear her guardian Nereid's dirge
Float o'er the hollow-sounding surge,
While fast from ocean's heaving verge
The last faint splendor flies:
And thou, dear stream! beloved in vain
By sacred freedom's chosen train,
Where moonbeams rest on ruins drear,
The musing sage may rove alone;
And many an awful thought sublime
May fill his soul, when memory shows,
That there, in days of elder time,
The world's metropolis arose ;
Where now, by mouldering walls, he sees
The silent Thames unheeded flow,
And only hears the river-breeze,
Through reeds and willows whispering low.
Where are the states of ancient fame?
Athens, and Sparta's victor-name,
And all that propped, in war and peace,
The arms, and nobler arts, of Greece?
All-grasping Rome, that proudly hurled
Her mandates o'er the prostrate world,
Long heard mankind her chains deplore,
And fell, as Carthage fell before.*
Whose banks wealth, pomp, and beauty fill!
Reft of the wise, the brave, the good,
Like them may'st roll, a lonely flood,
Deserted, drear, and still.
Where are the states, &c.
*Sanazzaro, in his poem De partu Virginis, has a fine passage on the fallen state of Carthage, which Tasso has imitated in the Gerusalemme Liberata :
Et qui vertentes inmania saxa juvencos
Flectit arans, qua devictæ Carthaginis arces
Procubuere, jacentque infausto in litore turres
Evers. Quantum illa metus, quantum illa laborum
Urbs dedit insultans Latio et Laurentibus arvis!
Nunc passim vix reliquias, vix nomina servans,
Obruitur propriis non agnoscenda ruinis.
Et quermiur genus infelix humana labare
Membra ævo, quum regna palam moriantur, et urbes.
Giace l'alta Cartago: appena i segni
Dell'alte sue ruine il lido serba.
Muojono le città; muojono i regni ;
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba :
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
O nostra mente cupida e superba !
Is this the crown, the final meed,
To man's sublimest toils decreed?
Must all, from glory's radiant height,
Descend alike the paths of night?
Must she, whose voice of power resounds
On utmost ocean's loneliest bounds,
In darkness meet the whelming doom
That crushed the sovereign strength of Rome,
And o'er the proudest states of old
The storms of desolation rolled?
Time, the foe of man's dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,
Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night.
Still, beneath his frown appalling,
Man and all his works decay:
Still, before him, swiftly-falling,
Kings and kingdoms pass away.*
Cannot the hand of patriot zeal,
The heart that seeks the public weal,
The comprehensive mind,
Retard awhile the storms of fate,
That, swift or slow, or soon or late,
Shall hurl to ruin every state,
And leave no trace behind?
Perchance when many a distant year
Urged by the hand of fate, has flown,
Where moonbeams rest on ruins drear,
The musing sage may rove alone;
And many an awful thought sublime
May fill his soul, when memory shows,
That there, in days of elder time,
The world's metropolis arose ;
Where now, by mouldering walls, he sees
The silent Thames unheeded flow,
And only hears the river-breeze
Through reeds and willows whispering low.
Cannot the hand, &c.
Oh Britain! oh my native land!
To science, art, and freedom dear!
Whose sails o'er farthest seas expand,
And brave the tempest's dread career!
When comes that hour, as come it must,
That sinks thy glory in the dust,
May no degenerate Briton live,
Beneath a stranger's chain to toil,
And to a haughty conqueror give
The produce of thy sacred soil!
Oh! dwells there one, on all thy plains,
If British blood distend his veins,
Who would not burn thy fame to save,
Or perish in his country's grave?
Ah! sure, if skill and courage true
Can check destruction's headlong way,
Still shall thy power its course pursue,
Nor sink, but with the world's decay.
Long as the cliff that girds thine isle
The bursting surf of ocean stems,
Shall commerce, wealth, and plenty smile
Along the silver-eddying Thames :*
Still shall thine empire's fabric stand,
Admired and feared from land to land,
Through every circling age renewed,
Unchanged, unshaken, unsubdued;
As rocks resist the wildest breeze,
That sweeps thy tributary seas.
STANZAS, WRITTEN AT SEA.+
HOU white-rolling sea! from thy foam-crested billows, That restlessly flash in the silver moon-beam, In fancy I turn to the green-waving willows, That rise by the side of my dear native stream. # Ποταμος περ εύῤῥοος, ΑΡΓΥΡΟΔΙΝΗΣ. ΗOMERUS. In the North Sea on board a man-of-war in 1809.
There softly in moonlight soft waters are playing,
Which light-breathing zephyrs symphoniously sweep; While here the loud wings of the north-wind are swaying, And whirl the white spray of the wild-dashing deep.
Sweet scenes of my childhood! with tender emotion,
Kind memory, still wakeful, your semblance portrays :
And I sigh, as I turn from the wide-beating ocean
To the paths where I roamed in my infantine days.
In fancy before me the pine-boughs are waving,
Beneath whose deep canopy musing I strayed;
In crystalline waters their image is laving,
And the friends of my bosom repose in their shade.
Ye fair-spreading fields, which fertility blesses!
Ye rivers, that murmur with musical chime!
Ye groves of dark pine, in whose sacred recesses
The nymph of romance holds her vigils sublime!
Ye heath-mantled hills, in lone wildness ascending!
Ye valleys, true mansions of peace and repose!
Ever green be your shades, nature's children defending,
Where liberty sweetens what labour bestows.
Oh blest, trebly blest, is the peasant's condition!
From courts and from cities reclining afar,
He hears not the summons of senseless ambition,
The tempests of ocean, and tumults of war.
Round the standard of battle though thousands may rally
When the trumpet of glory is pealing aloud,
He dwells in the shade of his own native valley,
And turns the same earth which his forefathers ploughed.
In realms far remote while the merchant is toiling,
In search of that wealth he may never enjoy;
The land of his foes while the soldier is spoiling,
When honour commands him to rise and destroy;
Through mountainous billows, with whirlwinds contending,
While the mariner bounds over wide-raging seas,
Still peace, o'er the peasant her mantle extending,
Brings health and content in the sigh of the breeze.
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