LXXXIII. The Vision changes-ages take their flight: All, save the Temple, dream-like, now is flown: The City's place is vanished from the sight: One massive fragment from that shrine is thrown, One sits thereon of kingly mien, alone: Deep lines of thought upon his brow appear: The imperial toga hath the Roman shown: He gazes on the answering Ruin ;—near His silent courtiers wait-for dumb is flattery here! LXXXIV. It is Augustus Cæsar: it may be Truth silently is entering his breast, Filled with the wisdom of antiquity: Those mighty spirits who their words impressed, Passed, yea, forgotten as the breeze that blew A deeper gloom upon his forehead grew, Feeling how vainly Fame doth here our life renew. LXXXV. He felt the Power presiding here, as thou : Even where she stood-unknown: he turned aside: Truth entered in his soul-her words were unforgot. LXXXVI. The Sun is setting: carrying Day before, And leaving Night and Solitude behind: Material god! and is the word-NO MORE Stamped on thy blazing brow? shalt thou, enshrined Soul of that infinite space, thy mandate find, The irrevocable doom to be destroyed? Or, art thou living like the Almighty Mind? Thy beams decreed to lighten o'er the void Where once our World of Life, thought, suffered, and enjoyed! LXXXVII. Glorious idolatry of elder time! God-like, or rising, throned, or in decline: Where are those days when men, like gods, sublime, Bowed on their hills? yea, hallowed as divine The Stars that drew their crowns of light from thine! They who beheld in thee the visible face Of the INVISIBLE within his shrine: What shrine was like thine Eye? what altar-place Like thy all-infinite heaven-whose walls are echoless space? LXXXVIII. Lord of the Day! and being infinite, That lives within thy beams-whose life thou art : Creator of the Seasons-Eye of Light! Thy rays pervade, like melody, the heart, Of glory, power, and of majesty, Are drawn from thy bright Urn by treasuring Memory! LXXXIX. The blue Mediterranean bosoms thee: Thy crown of many hues doth o'er her glow; Nor all the rapture which thou giv'st, avow? The pulses of thy mighty Heart on high Are heard like thunder-throbbing everlastingly! XC. Roll on for ever, wildly fresh and free! And they, the lights that shone o'er ages, shrink Unchanged alone thou roll'st from shore to shore, Girding the earth like heaven-the same for evermore! XCI. And galaxied with Cyclades, whose names Enduring as the stars hath Memory kept: What glorious deeds each shore opposing claims! What patriots there even virtue overstepped; What baffled tyrants vainly there have wept, Checked in their game of slaughter unessayed, And, while thy Waves in thunder by them swept, Stood-even as children!-but thy Voice obeyed: "No further pass—even here shall thy proud course be stayed!" XCII. Thou mighty Being! vain are round thee reared Thou, who hast made an Ocean of the land, What Mammoth-monsters, there, lie unconfessed! Oh, in thy mystery alone how grand Art thou!—the Almighty mirrored in thy breast: The calm-the wrath—the thunder-the eternal rest! |