Yet if, as holiest men have deemed,
there be
A land of souls beyond that sable
shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious
lore;
How sweet it were in concert to
adore
With those who made our mortal labours
light!
To hear each voice we feared to
hear no more!
Behold each mighty shade revealed
to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the
right!
IX.
There, thou!—whose love
and life together fled,
Have left me here to love and live
in vain —
Twined with my heart, and can I
deem thee dead,
When busy memory flashes on my brain?
Well—I will dream that
we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant
breast:
If aught of young Remembrance then
remain,
Be as it may Futurity’s behest,
For me ’twere bliss enough to know thy spirit
blest!
X.
Here let me sit upon this mossy
stone,
The marble column’s yet unshaken
base!
Here, son of Saturn, was thy favourite
throne!
Mightiest of many such! Hence
let me trace
The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.
It may not be: nor even can
Fancy’s eye
Restore what time hath laboured
to deface.
Yet these proud pillars claim no
passing sigh;
Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.
XI.
But who, of all the plunderers of
yon fane
On high, where Pallas lingered,
loth to flee
The latest relic of her ancient
reign —
The last, the worst, dull spoiler,
who was he?
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could
be!
England! I joy no child he
was of thine:
Thy free-born men should spare what
once was free;
Yet they could violate each saddening
shrine,
And bear these altars o’er the long reluctant
brine.
XII.
But most the modern Pict’s
ignoble boast,
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and
Time hath spared:
Cold as the crags upon his native
coast,
His mind as barren and his heart
as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose
hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena’s
poor remains:
Her sons too weak the sacred shrine
to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother’s
pains,
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s
chains.
XIII.
What! shall it e’er be said
by British tongue
Albion was happy in Athena’s
tears?
Though in thy name the slaves her
bosom wrung,
Tell not the deed to blushing Europe’s
ears;
The ocean queen, the free Britannia,
bears
The last poor plunder from a bleeding
land:
Yes, she, whose generous aid her
name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a
harpy’s hand.
Which envious eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.