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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
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: | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| Ancient of days! august Athena! where, | 10 |
| Where are thy men of might, thy grand in soul? | |
| Gone,—glimmering through the dream of things that were: | |
| 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! | 15 |
| The warrior’s weapon and the sophist’s stole | |
| Are sought in vain, and o’er each mouldering tower, | |
| Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. | |
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| Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! | |
| Come,—but molest not yon defenceless urn! | 20 |
| Look on this spot,—a nation’s sepulchre! | |
| Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. | |
| Even gods must yield,—religions take their turn: | |
| ’T was Jove’s,—’t is Mahomet’s; and other creeds | |
| Will rise with other years, till man shall learn | 25 |
| Vainly his incense roars, his victim bleeds; | |
| Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. | |
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| Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven,— | |
| Is ’t not enough, unhappy thing, to know | |
| Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, | 30 |
| That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, | |
| Thou know’st not, reck’st not to what region, so | |
| On earth no more, but mingled with the skies! | |
| Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? | |
| Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: | 35 |
| That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. | |
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| 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, | 40 |
| Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps | |
| Where demigods 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! | 45 |
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| Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, | |
| Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: | |
| Yes, this was once Ambition’s airy hall, | |
| The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul. | |
| Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole, | 50 |
| The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, | |
| And Passion’s host, that never brooked control: | |
| Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, | |
| People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? | |
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