| |
| APPROACH and pause,—there is a feeling here | |
| That stifles words and half provokes a tear; | |
| That comes abroad with wonder overcast, | |
| And coldly points to a mysterious past; | |
| Like to some jewels rare whose each bright face | 5 |
| Doth mock the poor dead fingers they encase, | |
| Or dungeon’s gloom that here and there hath won | |
| A stream of light from some far-distant sun,— | |
| So these strewn fragments pour their pregnant rays, | |
| And speak of distant worlds and mightier days, | 10 |
| Of vast conditions with their human seas, | |
| Of golden cities and voluptuous ease, | |
| When was the pile that now such sadness wings | |
| The awe of peoples and the pride of kings. | |
| |
| And such the fall that even nations know, | 15 |
| The gilt of thrones at best a fleeting show; | |
| Thus Life and Death by Time are borne along, | |
| Reactions each of Virtue and of Wrong; | |
| Pause then and weep,—the place is all a grave, | |
| The sepulchre of sovereign and of slave; | 20 |
| Here pride and state resolve to humble dust, | |
| The toys and tools of luxury and lust, | |
| And power that erst could dazzle and dethrone | |
| Resigns its sceptre to a crumbling stone. | |
| |
| Is this the finis then of human might, | 25 |
| And this the fall from man’s remotest height, | |
| Proud man who loves his filmy waifs to flaunt, | |
| Replete with his own littleness and want? | |
| Approach, vain god, and scan this empty scroll! | |
| And earthiness behold thy earthy goal, | 30 |
| The consummation of a common lot, | |
| Alike dismembered—and alike forgot. | |
| |
| Ah, this is not the all of human strife, | |
| ’T is but a page and not the book of life! | |
| O God of Law! we bless thee for the text | 35 |
| That makes this world a preface to the next! | |
| A pilgrimage of one short day and night, | |
| An infant school, a fledgling’s trial flight, | |
| Where Sense can catch a taste of Heaven’s sea, | |
| And Mind a glimmer of the vast to be, | 40 |
| Yet store each deed and thought from very birth | |
| In the great garner of immortal worth. | |
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