While, by some spell render'd invisible,
Or, if approach'd, approach'd by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remain'd
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,
Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that Nature has resum'd her right,
And taken to herself what man renounc'd;
No cornice, triglyph, 1or worn abacus, 2
But with thick ivy hung or branching fern;
Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure!
From my youth upward have I long'd to tread
This classic ground-and am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms. 3
The air is sweet with violets, running wild1
Mid broken friezes and fall'n capitals;
Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,
Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost, 5
(Turning to thee, divine philosophy,
Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul)
Sail'd slowly by, two thousand years ago,
For Athens; when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the Pæstan gardens, slack'd her cours
On as he mov'd along the level shore,
These temples, in their splendour eminent
The ornament peculiar to the Doric frieze.
That part of a column which serves as a covering to the capital.
The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. Martial mentions them with the honey of Hybla.
5 The introduction to his treatise on Glory.
Mid arcs and obelisks, and domes and towers,
Reflecting back the radiance of the west,
Well might he dream of glory!-Now coil'd up,
The serpent sleeps within them; the she-wolf
Suckles her young; and as alone I stand
In this the nobler pile, the elements
Of earth and air its only floor and covering,
How solemn is the stillness? Nothing stirs
Save the shrill-voic'd cicala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the fluted shaft with short quick spring,
To vanish in the chinks that time has made.
In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries,
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confus'd,
Athwart the innumerable columns flung)
In such an hour he came, who saw and told,
Led by the mighty genius of the place.1
Walls of some capital city first appear'd,
Half raz'd, half sunk, or scatter'd as in scorn;
-And what within them? what but in the midst
These three in more than their original grandeur
And, round about, no stone upon another?
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements.
'Tis said a stranger in the days of old
(Some say a Dorian, some a Sybarite;
But distant things are ever lost in clouds)
'Tis said a stranger came, and, with his plough,
Trac'd out the site; and Posidonia rose 2,
They are said to to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century.
Originally a Greek city under that name, and afterwards a Roman city under the name of Pæstum.
Severely great, Neptune the tutelar god;1
A Homer's language murmuring in her streets,
And in her haven many a mast from Tyre.
Then came another, an unbidden guest.
He knock'd, and enter'd with a train in arms;
And all was chang'd, her very name and language!
The Tyrian merchant, shipping at his door
Ivory and gold, and silk, and frankincense,
Sail'd as before, but, sailing, cried "For Pæstum."
And now a Virgil, now an Ovid sung
Pæstum's twice-blowing roses; while, within,
Parents and children mourn'd—and, every year,
('Twas on the day of some old festival)
Met to give way to tears, and once again,
Talk in the ancient tongue of things gone by.
At length an Arab climb'd the battlements, 2
Slaying the sleepers in the dead of night;
And from all eyes the glorious vision fled!
Leaving a place lonely and dangerous,
Where whom the robber spares, a deadlier foe3
Strikes at unseen-and at a time when joy
Opens the heart, when summer-skies are blue,
And the clear air is soft and delicate;
For then the demon works-then with that air
The thoughtless wretch drinks in a subtile poison,
Lulling to sleep; and, when he sleeps, he dies.
But what are these still standing in the midst? The earth has rock'd beneath; the thunder-stone Pass'd thro' and thro', and left its traces there; Yet still they stand as by some unknown charter!
1 The principal temple is supposed to have been dedicated to this divinity, the other to Ceres.
It was surprised and destroyed by the Saracens at the beginning of the tenth century, and the following century its temples, &c. were ransacked of their ornaments by Robert Guiscard, to adorn the cathedral at Salerno.
Oh, they are nature's own! and, as allied
To the vast mountains and the eternal sea,
They want no written history; theirs a voice
For ever speaking to the heart of man!
FINAL RESTORATION OF THE JEWS.
BUT who shall see the glorious day,
When, thron'd on Zion's brow,
The Lord shall rend the veil away
Which hides the nations now!
When earth no more beneath the fear
Of his rebuke shall lie 2;
When pain shall cease, and ev'ry tear
Be wip'd from ev'ry eye! 3
Then, Judah! thou no more shalt mourn
Beneath the heathen's chain;
Thy days of splendour shall return,
And all be new again.4
The Fount of Life shall then be quaff'd
In peace, by all who come !5
every wind that blows shall waft
Some long-lost exile home!
EVIL, like a rolling stone upon a mountain top, A child may first impel, a giant cannot stop.
1 Isaiah, xxv. 7.
Rev. xxi. 4. 5 Ibid. xxii. 7.
* Ibid. xxv. 8.
Ibid. xxi. 17.
THE Commonest spot we cannot without pain
Turn from, where we have tarried but a day,
And struck no roots, when to our hearts we say,
We ne'er shall look upon this spot again;
What wonder then if I can not restrain
Some sadness, turning from these haunts away,
Where we have many a month been free to stray
By verdant stream, o'er hill or pleasant plain;
A momentary sadness, yet which brings
Thanksgiving with it, gratitude for this,
That where we live, we cannot choose but love.
We make a friend of nature, until bliss
(Few guess how much) we daily, hourly prove
From the known aspect of inanimate things.
VERSES WRITTEN ON THE BANKS OF THE
ADDRESSED BY THE POET TO HIS SISTER.
THE castled crag of Drachenfels 2
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, Whose breast of waters broadly swells Between the banks which bear the vine,
Every man is fastened to some spot of earth, by the thousand small threads that habit and association are continually stealing over him.-Rogers.
The castle of Drachenfels stands on the highest summit of the Seven Mountains, over the banks of the Rhine: it is in ruins, and connected with some singular traditions. It is the first in view on the road from Bonn. The number of castles and cities along the course of the Rhine, on both sides, is very great, and their situations remarkably beautiful.
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