AMIDST the peopled and the regal Isle,
Whose vales, rejoicing in their beauty, smile;
Whose cities, fearless of the spoiler, tower,
And send on every breeze a voice of power;
Hath Desolation rear'd herself a throne,
And mark'd a pathless region for her own?
Yes! though thy turf no stain of carnage wore,
When bled the noble hearts of many a shore,
Though not a hostile step thy heath-flowers bent,
When empires totter'd and the earth was rent;
Yet lone, as if some trampler of mankind
Had still'd life's busy murmurs on the wind,
And, flushed with power, in daring pride's excess,
Stamp'd on thy soil the curse of barrenness;
For thee in vain descend the dews of heaven,
In vain the sunbeam and the shower are given;
Wild Dartmoor! thou that, 'midst thy moun-
tains rude,
Hast robed thyself with haughty solitude,
As a dark cloud on summer's clear blue sky,
A mourner circled with festivity!
For all beyond is life!-the rolling sea,
The rush, the swell, whose echoes reach not thee.
Yet who shall find a scene so wild and bare,
But man has left his lingering traces there?
E'en on mysterious Afric's boundless plains,
Where noon with attributes of midnight reigns.
In gloom and silence, fearfully profound,
As of a world unwaked to soul or sound,
Though the sad wand'rer of the burning zone
Feels, as amidst infinity, alone,
And nought of life be near; his camel's tread
Is o'er the prostrate cities of the dead!
Some column, rear'd by long-forgotten hands,
Just lifts its head above the billowy sands-
Some mouldering shrine still consecrates the scene,
And tells that glory's footstep there hath been.
There hath the spirit of the mighty pass'd,
Not without record; though the desert blast,
Borne on the wings of Time, hath swept away
The proud creations rear'd to brave decay.
But thou, lone region! whose unnoticed name
No lofty deeds have mingled with their fame,
Who shall unfold thine annals?-who shall tell
If on thy soil the sons of heroes fell,
In those far ages, which left no trace,
No sunbeam, on the pathway of their race?
Though, haply, in the unrecorded days
Of kings and chiefs, who pass'd without their praise,
Thou might'st have rear'd the valiant and the
In history's page there is no tale of thee.
Yet hast thou thy memorials. On the wild Still rise the cairns of yore, all rudely piled, But hallow'd by that instinct which reveres Things fraught with characters of elder years.
And such are these. Long centuries are flown, Bow'd many a crest, and shatter'd many a throne, Mingling the urn,the trophy, and the bust,
With what they hide-their shrined and treas ured dust;
Men traverse Alps and oceans, to behold
Earth's glorious works fast mingling with her mould;
But still these nameless chronicles of death,
'Midst the deep silence of the unpeopled heath,
Stand in primeval artlessness, and wear
The same sepulchral mien, and almost share
Th' eternity of nature, with the forms
Of the crown'd hills beyond, the dwellings of the storms.
Yet, what avails it, if each moss-grown heap Still on the waste its lonely vigils keep,
Guarding the dust which slumbers well beneath (Nor needs such care) from each cold season's breath?
Where is the voice to tell their tale who rest,
Thus rudely pillow'd on the desert's breast?
Doth the sword sleep beside them?
A sound of battle 'midst the silent scene
Where now the flocks repose?-did the scythed
Here reap its harvest in the ranks of war?
And raise these piles in memory of the slain,
And the red combat of the mountain-plain?
It may be thus:-the vestiges of strife,
Around yet lingering, mark the steps of life,
And the rude arrow's barb remains to tell
How by its stroke, perchance, the mighty fell
To be forgotten. Vain the warrior's pride,
The chieftain's power-they had no bard, and
died.
But other scenes, from their untroubled sphere,
The eternal stars of night have witness'd here.
There stands an altar of unsculptured stone,
Far on the moor, a thing of ages gone,
Propp'd on its granite pillars, whence the rains, And pure bright dews, have laved the crimson stains
Left by dark rites of blood: for here, of yore,
When the bleak waste a robe of forest wore,
And many a crested oak, which now lies low,
Waved its wild wreath of sacred mistletoe;
Here, at dead midnight, through the haunted
shade,
On Druid-harps the quivering moonbeam play'd And spells were breath'd, that fill'd the deepening gloom
With the pale, shadowy people of the tomb.
Or, haply, torches waving through the night,
Bade the red cairn-fires blaze from every height,
Like battle-signals, whose unearthly gleams
Threw o'er the desert's hundred hills and
streams,
A savage grandeur: while the starry skies
Rung with the peal of mystic harmonies,
As the loud harp its deep-toned hymns sent forth To the storm-ruling powers, the war-gods of the North.
But wilder sounds were there; th' imploring
That woke the forest's echo in reply,
But not the heart's!-Unmoved, the wizard train
Stood round their human victim, and in vain
His prayer for mercy rose; in vain his glance
Look'd up, appealing to the blue expanse,
Where, in their calm, immortal beauty, shone
Heaven's cloudless orbs. With faint and fainter
Bound on the shrine of sacrifice he lay,
Till, drop by drop, life's current ebb'd away;
Till rock and turf grew deeply, darkly red,
And the pale moon gleam'd paler on the dead.
Have such things been, and here?-where still-
ness dwells
'Midst the rude barrows and the moorland swells, Thus undisturb'd?-Oh! long the gulf of time Hath closed in darkness o'er those days of crime,
And earth no vestige of their path retains,
Save such as these, which strew her loneliest
With records of man's conflicts and his doom,
His spirit and his dust-the altar and the tomb
But ages roll'd away; and England stood,
With her proud banner streaming o'er the flood'
And with a lofty calmness in her
And regal in collected majesty,
To breast the storm of battle. Every breeze
Bore sounds of triumph o'er her own blue seas;
And other lands, redeem'd and joyous, drank
The life-blood of her heroes, as they sank
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