Then loud roar'd the thunder, and PEDRO, in dread, And prone on the floor fell this son of the cowl, Poor AUGUSTINE's bosom with terror was cold, Meanwhile, the good ABBOT was boosing about; Bewilder'd by liquor, by haste, and by fright, By JERONIMO's carcass tripp'd up unawares, Thence sprung the dire tumult, which, rising so near, But the sons of ST. MARK, now appearing with tapers, They reel'd back to their bowls, laughed at care and foul weather, And were shortly all under the table together. September, 1804. W STANZAS. [Written about 1805.] HEN hope her warm tints on the future shall cast, May their mystical colours, by fancy combined, Many are the forms of fate, Much scarcely hoped in life betides, Much unexpected by the gods is given, Much strongly promised from our hope is riven; Now, should some god approach me, saying, "Crato, That good and ill betide alike unjustly." TO MRS. DE ST. CROIX, ON HER RECOVERY. [Written in 1805.] HEN wintry storms, with envious pow'r, W The glorious orb of day o'ercast; When black and deep the snow-clouds low'r; And coldly blows th' ungenial blast; The feather'd race, no longer gay, Makes hill and dale with song resound, From thousand echoes ring around. But grief and pain no more assail, And all with smiles thy steps attend; With renovated bliss they hail Their guide, their parent, and their friend. PALMYRA.* [Published in 1806.] ανακτα των παντων υπερβαλλοντα χρόνον μακάρων.--PIND. 1. S the mountain-torrent rages, A Loud, impetuous, swift, and strong, So the rapid stream of ages Rolls with ceaseless tide along. * Palmyra is situated under a barren ridge of hills to the west, and open on its other sides to the desert. It is about six days' journey from Aleppo, and as many from Damascus, and about twenty leagues west of the Euphrates, in the latitude of thirty-four degrees, according to Ptolemy. Some geographers have placed it in Syria, others in Phoenicia, and some in Arabia.-Wood's Ruins of Pal myra. That Solomon built Tadmor in the wilderness, we are told in the Man's little day what clouds o'ercast! Old Testament; and that this was the same city which the Greeks and Romans called afterwards Palmyra, though the Syrians retained the first name, we learn from Josephus.—Ibid. We departed from Aleppo on Michaelmas day, 1691, and in six easy days' travel over a desert country, came to Tadmor. . . . Having passed by the ruins of a handsome mosque, we had the prospect of such magnificent ruins, that if it be lawful to frame a conjecture of the original beauty of that place by what is still remaining, I question whether any city in the world could have challenged precedence of this in its glory.-Philosophical Transactions, LowTHROP's Abridgement, Vol. III. On the fourteenth of March, 1751, we arrived at the end of the plain, where the hills to our right and left seemed to meet. We found between those hills a vale, through which an aqueduct, now ruined, formerly conveyed water to Palmyra. In this vale, to our right and left, were several square towers of a considerable height, which, upon a nearer approach, we found were the sepulchres of the ancient Palmyrenes. We had scarcely passed these venerable monuments, when the hills opening discovered to us, all at once, the greatest quantity of ruins we had ever seen, all of white marble, and beyond them, towards the Euphrates, a flat waste, as far as the eye could reach, without any object which showed either life or motion. It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more striking than this view: so great a number of Corinthian pillars, mixed with so little wall or solid building, afforded a most romantic variety of prospect. --WOOD. Undoubtedly the effect of such a sight is not to be communicated. The reader must represent to himself a range of erect columns, occupying an extent of more than twenty-six hundred yards, and concealing a multitude of other edifices behind them. In this space we sometimes find a palace of which nothing remains but the courts and walls; sometimes a temple whose peristyle is half thrown down; and now a portico, a gallery, or triumphal arch. Here stand groups of columns, whose symmetry is destroyed by the fall of many of them; there we see them ranged in rows of such length, that similar to rows of trees, they deceive the sight, and assume the appearance of continued walls. If from this striking scene we cast our eyes upon the ground, another, almost as varied, presents itself; on all sides we behold nothing but subverted shafts, some entire, others shattered to pieces, or dislocated in their joints; and on which side soever we look, the earth is strewed with vast stones half buried, with broken entablatures, damaged capitals, mutilated friezes, disfigured reliefs, effaced sculptures, violated tombs, and altars defiled by dust. -VOLNEY'S Travels in Syria. The noblest works of human pow'r OBLIVION'S awful storms resound; II. 'Mid SYRIA's barren world of sand, I mark, in silence and alone, His melancholy reign. These silent wrecks, more eloquent than speech, Truths more sublime than bard or sage can teach Where many a mould'ring tomb is spread, In fancy's ear, The voices of th' illustrious dead: As slow they pass along, they seem to sigh, III. As scatter'd round, a dreary space, * The mansions of your sacred dust, Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadmor's marble wastes survey.-GRAINGER. Of several ancient ways of writing this name, the pop of the Alexandrian copy comes nearest to the pronunciation of the present Arabs.-WOOD. I have adopted this pronunciation as a more poetical one than Tedmor or Tadmor. |