O Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world! When from the Fast a cloud of dust proceeds, And faint barbaric music met mine ear. Onward they march, and foremost I descried, Commingled tribes--a wild magnificence. Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show, Then, havock leaguing with infuriate zeal, Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace: Beneath my shade a wondering army flock'd, With force combined, they wrench'd me from my base, And earth beneath the dread concussion rock'd. Nile from his banks receded with affright, The startled Sphinx long trembled at the sound, While from each pyramid's astounded height, The loosen'd stones slid rattling to the ground. I watch'd, as in the dust supine I lay, The fall of Thebes,-as I had mark'd its fame,Till crumbling down, as ages roll'd away, Its site a lonely wilderness became ! The throngs that chok'd its hundred gates of yore; Deep was the silence now, unless some vast Or haply, in the palaces of kings, Some stray jackal sat howling on the throne: Nature o'erwhelms the relics left by time;- Beneath a mighty winding-sheet of sand. Vain is each monarch's unremitting pains, Twenty-three centuries unmoved I lay, Snatch'd in this crisis from my yawning grave, In London, now with face erect I gaze But who my future destiny shall guess? Saint Paul's may lie-like Memnon's templelow; London, like Thebes, may be a wilderness, And Thames, like Nile, through silent ruins flow. Then haply may my travels be renew'd:- To some new seat of empire in the west. Mortal! since human grandeur ends in dust, In those bless'd realms-where naught shall pass away! HORACE SMITH. MONT BLANC. THOU monarch of the upper air, For morning's earliest of light, And evening's last of heaven. The vapour from the marsh, the smoke From crowded cities sent, Are purified before they reach Thy loftier element. Thy hues are not of earth but heaven; Only the sunset rose Hath leave to fling a crimson dye Upon thy stainless snows. Now out on those adventurers Before that human step had felt The glory of thy forehead made Men gazed upon thee as a star, With dreams like thine own floating clouds The vague but not the vain. No feelings are less vain than those Till blent with nature's mysteries It catches loftier impulses; But now where may we seek a place Our steps have been o'er every soil, Those isles, the beautiful Azores, The fortunate, the fair! We look'd for their perpetual spring Bright El Dorado, land of gold, How pleasant were the wild beliefs Alas! to our posterity Will no such tales be told. We know too much, scroll after scroll Our only point of ignorance Nurse of the tempest, hast thou none To guard thy outraged brow? MISS LANDON. THE SWITZER'S WIFE. THE bright blood left the youthful mother's cheek; Back on the linden-stem she lean'd her form; And her lip trembled, as it strove to speak, Like a frail harp-string, shaken by the storm. 'Twas but a moment, and the faintness pass'd, And the free Alpine spirit woke at last. And she, that ever through her home had moved And timid in her happiness the while, Stood brightly forth, and steadfastly, that hour, Ay, pale she stood, but with an eye of light, I know what thou wouldst do,-and be it done! |