’Behold yon sterile spot;
Where now the wandering Arab’s tent 135
Flaps in the desert-blast. 
There once old Salem’s haughty fane
Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes,
And in the blushing face of day
Exposed its shameful glory. 140
Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father;
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man’s God to sweep it from the earth,
And spare his children the detested task 145
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning
The choicest days of life,
To soothe a dotard’s vanity. 
There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God; 150
They rushed to war, tore from the mother’s womb
The unborn child,—­old age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe.  Oh! they were fiends: 
But what was he who taught them that the God 155
Of nature and benevolence hath given
A special sanction to the trade of blood? 
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 160
Itself into forgetfulness.

’Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
There is a moral desert now: 
The mean and miserable huts,
The yet more wretched palaces, 165
Contrasted with those ancient fanes,
Now crumbling to oblivion;
The long and lonely colonnades,
Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,
Seem like a well-known tune, 170
Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
Remembered now in sadness. 
But, oh! how much more changed,
How gloomier is the contrast
Of human nature there! 175
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant’s slave,
A coward and a fool, spreads death around—­
Then, shuddering, meets his own. 
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowled and hypocritical monk 180
Prays, curses and deceives.

’Spirit, ten thousand years
Have scarcely passed away,
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks
His enemy’s blood, and aping Europe’s sons, 185
Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city,
Metropolis of the western continent: 
There, now, the mossy column-stone,
Indented by Time’s unrelaxing grasp, 190
Which once appeared to brave
All, save its country’s ruin;
There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
Of gardens long run wild, 195