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(From Ruins of Many Lands) UNLIKE Copan, yet buried, too, mid trees, | |
Upspringing there for sumless centuries, | |
Behold a royal city! vast and lone, | |
Lost to each race,to all the world unknown; | |
Like famed Pompeii, neath her lava bed, | 5 |
Till chance unveiled the City of the Dead. | |
Palenque!dark seat of kings!as oer the plain, | |
Clothed with thick copse, the traveller toils with pain, | |
Climbs the rude mound the shadowy scene to trace, | |
He views in mute surprise thy desert grace. | 10 |
At every step some palace meets his eye, | |
Some figure frowns, some temple courts the sky. | |
It seems as if that hour the verdurous earth, | |
By genii struck, had given these fabrics birth, | |
Save that old Time hath flung his darkening pall | 15 |
On each tree-shaded tower and pictured wall. | |
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The royal palace decks its stately mound, | |
Girt by wild shrubs, by waving thistles crowned; | |
But strength still breathes throughout the lordly pile, | |
And lingering beauty sheds a mournful smile. | 20 |
We walk the rooms where kings and princes met, | |
Frown on the walls their sculptured portraits yet; | |
Strange their costume,ye see no native face, | |
Lip, brow, and hue bespeak an Ethiop race. | |
The square stone portals, smooth and glittering floors, | 25 |
The spacious courts, and sounding corridors, | |
The picture-writing earliest races learn, | |
The giant figures, mournful, calm, and stern, | |
All point to climes beyond the Eastern sea, | |
Egypts old shores, or, far Cathay! to thee: | 30 |
How the bold ancients crossed the watery way, | |
By star or needle, t is not ours to say; | |
Enough we meet their gorgeous buildings here, | |
Their picture-art, and creeds of gloom and fear. | |
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Lo! oer the dense black mass of giant trees | 35 |
The moon upsprings, and sighs the midnight breeze; | |
Now looks Palenqueon ruin, ruin piled | |
August, yet spectral,beautiful, yet wild: | |
The tower, just peering through the foliage green, | |
Bathed in the beams, a silvery point is seen; | 40 |
The moss-grown palace, temple dark and still, | |
The shattered pillar thrown across the rill; | |
The firefly, darting through the forest shade, | |
The owls gray eyes that glare within the glade; | |
The spells of silence on all earth that lie, | 45 |
Naught but the cold moon moving in the sky, | |
No sight like this may other ruins show; | |
They wake to wonder, while they melt to woe, | |
And seem to breathe one voice,that voice the knell | |
Of races gone, whose history none may tell. | 50 |
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