| |
| I HAD a vision.— | |
| A city before me, desolate, | |
| And yet not all decay’d. A summer sun | |
| Shone on it from a most etherial sky, | |
| And the soft winds threw o’er it such a balm, | 5 |
| One would have thought it was a sepulchre, | |
| And this the incense offer’d to the manes | |
| Of the departed. | |
| In the light it lay | |
| Peacefully, as if all its thousands took | 10 |
| Their afternoon’s repose, and soon would wake | |
| To the loud joy of evening. There it lay, | |
| A city of magnificent palaces, | |
| And churches, towering more like things of heaven, | |
| The glorious fabrics, fancy builds in clouds, | 15 |
| And shapes on loftiest mountains—bright their domes | |
| Threw back the living ray, and proudly stood | |
| Many a statue, looking like the forms | |
| Of spirits hovering in mid air. Tall trees, | |
| Cypress and plane, waved over many a hill | 20 |
| Cumber’d with ancient ruins—broken arches, | |
| And tottering columns—vaults, where never came | |
| The blessed beam of day, but only lamps | |
| Shedding a funeral light, were kindled there, | |
| And gave to the bright frescoes on the walls, | 25 |
| And the pale statues in their far recesses, | |
| A dim religious awe. Rudely they lay, | |
| Scarce marking out to the inquisitive eye | |
| Their earliest outline. But as desolate | |
| Slumber’d the newer city, though its walls | 30 |
| Were yet unbroken, and its towering domes | |
| Had never stoop’d to ruin. All was still; | |
| Hardly the faintest sound of living thing | |
| Moved through the mighty solitude—and yet | |
| All wore the face of beauty. Not a cloud | 35 |
| Hung in the lofty sky, that seem’d to rise | |
| In twofold majesty, so bright and pure, | |
| It seem’d indeed a crystaline sphere—and there | |
| The sun rode onward in his conquering march | |
| Serenely glorious. From the mountain heights | 40 |
| Tinged with the blue of heaven, to the wide sea | |
| Glass’d with as pure a blue, one desolate plain | |
| Spread out, and over it the fairest sky | |
| Bent round and bless’d it. Life was teeming there | |
| In all its lower forms, a wilderness | 45 |
| Of rank luxuriance; flowers, and purpling vines | |
| Matted with deepest foliage, hid the ruins, | |
| And gave the semblance of a tangled wood | |
| To piles, that once were loudly eloquent | |
| With the glad cry of thousands. There were gardens | 50 |
| Round stateliest villas, full of graceful statues, | |
| And temples rear’d to woodland deities; | |
| And they were overcrowded with the excess | |
| Of beauty. All that most is coveted | |
| Beneath a colder sky, grew wantonly | 55 |
| And richly there. Myrtles and citrons fill’d | |
| The air with fragrance. From the tufted elm, | |
| Bent with its own too massy foliage, hung | |
| Clusters of sunny grapes in frosted purple, | |
| Drinking in spirit from the glowing air, | 60 |
| And dropping generous dews. The very wind | |
| Seem’d there a lover, and his easy wings | |
| Fann’d the gay bowers, as if in fond delay | |
| He bent o’er loveliest things, too beautiful | |
| Ever to know decay. The silent air | 65 |
| Floating as softly as a cloud of roses, | |
| Dropp’d from Idalia in a dewy shower,— | |
| The air itself seem’d like the breath of heaven | |
| Filling the groves of Eden. Yet these walls | |
| Are desolate—not a trace of living man | 70 |
| Is found amid these glorious works of man, | |
| And nature’s fairer glories. Why should he | |
| Be absent from the festival of life, | |
| The holiday of nature? Why not come | |
| To add to the sweet sounds of winds and waters— | 75 |
| Of winds uttering Æolian melodies | |
| To the bright, listening flowers, and waters falling | |
| Most musical from marble fountains wreathed | |
| With clustering ivy, like a poet’s brow— | |
| Why comes he not to add his higher strains, | 80 |
| And be the interpreter of lower things, | |
| In intellectual worship, at the throne | |
| Of the Beneficent Power, that gave to them | |
| Their pride and beauty?—“In these palaces, | |
| These awful temples, these religious caves, | 85 |
| These hoary ruins, and these twilight groves | |
| Teeming with life and love,—a secret plague | |
| Dwells, and the unwary foot, that ventures here, | |
| Returns not.—Fly! To linger here is death.” | |
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