2 Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, Exposed its shameful glory. Oh! many a widow, many an orphan, cursed The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God. Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were fiends! 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 "Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, Contrasted with those ancient fanes Now crumbling to oblivion; Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks ; Seem like a well-known tune, Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, But oh! how much more changed, Of human nature there! Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around— Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, "Spirit! ten thousand years Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks Arose a stately city, Metropolis of the western continent. There now the mossy column-stone, Rude in the uncultivated loveliness Of gardens long run wild, Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. Whither, as to a common centre, flocked But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: Fled, to return not until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity. "There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; But flowed in human veins : Of Greenland's sunless clime, "How strange is human pride! Is an unbounded world, I tell thee that those viewless beings And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs." The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstacy of admiration, felt All knowledge of the past revived. The events Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle ; Nature's unchanging harmony. III. "FAIRY!" the Spirit said, "I thank thee. Thou hast given A boon which I will not resign, and taught Experience from his folly: For, when the power of imparting joy Requires no other heaven. Fairy. Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! Yet learn thou what he is; Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless Time prepares Behold a gorgeous palace that amid Yon populous city rears its thousand towers, Of those who have no friend? He passes on. The King, the wearer of a gilded chain That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool PH Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites-that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save 5 All that they love from famine. When he hears Smothering the glow of shame that, spite of him, Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags His palled unwilling appetite. If gold The spring it draws from poisons not, -or vice, Behold him now Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye— Oh! mark that deadly visage. King. Oh! must this last for ever? I wish yet fear to clasp thee! No cessation! Awful Death, Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed Peace! In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest Fairy. Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And Peace defileth not her snowy robes In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters ; |