LXXXVI. Save where some solitary column mourns While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!" LXXXVII. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lordPreserves alike its bounds and boundless fame The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word; (39) Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career, XC. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past VOL. I. G XCII. The parted bosom clings to wonted home, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. XCIII. Let such approach this consecrated land, So may our country's name be undisgraced, XCIV. For thee, who thus in too protracted song Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise; Since cold each kinder heart that might approve, And none are left to please when none are left to love. XCV. Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me; Who did for me what none beside have done, Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee. What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall seeWould they had never been, or were to come! Would he had ne'er return'd to find fresh cause to roam! XCVI. Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, And clings to thoughts now better far removed! And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to lend. XCVII. Then must I plunge again into the crowd, And follow all that Peace disdains to seek? Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer, XCVIII. What is the worst of woes that wait on ages? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroy'd: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd, And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy'd. |