And lo! in wild confusion scattered round,
  Huge, shapeless, naked, massy piles of stone
  Rise, proudly towering o’er this barren ground,
  Scowling in mutual hate—­apart, alone,
  Stern, desolate they stand—­and seeming thrown
  By some dire, dread convulsion of the earth
  From her deep, silent caves, and hoary grown
  With age and storms that Boreas issues forth
  Replete with ire from his wild regions in the north.

  How beautiful! yet wildly beautiful,
  As group on group comes glim’ring on the eye,
  Making the heart, soul, mind, and spirit full
  Of holy rapture and sweet imagery;
  Till o’er the lip escapes th’ unconscious sigh,
  And heaves the breast with feeling, too too deep
  For words t’ express the awful sympathy,
  That like a dream doth o’er the senses creep,
  Chaining the gazer’s eye—­and yet he cannot weep.

  But stands entranced and rooted to the spot,
  While grows the scene upon him vast, sublime,
  Like some gigantic city’s ruin, not
  Inhabited by men, but Titans—­Time
  Here rests upon his scythe and fears to climb,
  Spent by th’ unceasing toil of ages past,
  Musing he stands and listens to the chime
  Of rock-born spirits howling in the blast,
  While gloomily around night’s sable shades are cast.

  Well deemed I ween the Druid sage of old
  In making this his dwelling place on high;
  Where all that’s huge and great from Nature’s mould,
  Spoke this the temple of his deity;
  Whose walls and roof were the o’erhanging sky,
  His altar th’ unhewn rock, all bleak and bare,
  Where superstition with red, phrensied eye
  And look all wild, poured forth her idol prayer,
  As rose the dying wail,[4] and blazed the pile in air.

  Lost in the lapse of time, the Druid’s lore
  Hath ceased to echo these rude rocks among;
  No altar new is stained with human gore;
  No hoary bard now weaves the mystic song;
  Nor thrust in wicker hurdles, throng on throng,
  Whole multitudes are offered to appease
  Some angry god, whose will and power of wrong
  Vainly they thus essayed to soothe and please—­
  Alas! that thoughts so gross man’s noblest powers should seize.

  But, bowed beneath the cross, see! prostrate fall
  The mummeries that long enthralled our isle;
  So perish error! and wide over all
  Let reason, truth, religion ever smile: 
  And let not man, vain, impious man defile
  The spark heaven lighted in the human breast;
  Let no enthusiastic rage, no sophist’s wile
  Lull the poor victim into careless rest,
  Since the pure gospel page can teach him to be blest.

  Weak, trifling man, O! come and ponder here
  Upon the nothingness of human things—­
  How vain, how very vain doth then appear
  The city’s hum, the pomp and pride of kings;
  All that from wealth, power, grandeur, beauty springs,
  Alike must fade, die, perish, be forgot;
  E’en he whose feeble hand now strikes the strings
  Soon, soon within the silent grave must rot—­
  Yet Nature’s still the same, though we see, we hear her not.