COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven!- but thou, alas! Didst never yet one mortal song inspire Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was, And is, despite of war and wasting fire, And years, that bade thy worship to expire: But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow. II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone First in the race that led to Glory's goal, They won, and passed away is this the whole? A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, III. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! 'T was Jove's 't is Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven Is't not enough, unhappy thing! to know That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. ས. Or burst the vanished Hero's lofty mound; Far on the solitary shore he sleeps: He fell, and falling nations mourned around; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps: Is that a temple where a God may dwell? Why, even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell! Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, And Passion's host, that never brooked control: |