The trophies ye have won, the wreaths ye wear-
Power with his red right hand,
And empire's despot brand,

Had ne'er achieved these proud rewards ye bear; But, in one general cause combined, [mind. The people's vigorous arm, the monarch's constant

Yet that untired by toil,
Unsway'd by lust of spoil,

Unmoved by fear, or soft desire of rest,
Ye kept your onward course
With unremitted force,

And to the distant goal united press'd;
The soldier's bed, the soldier's fare,

His dangers, wants, and toils, alike resolved to share.

And more-that when, at length,
Exulting in your strength,

In tyranny o'erthrown, and victory won,
Before you lowly laid,

Your dancing eyes survey'd

The prostrate form of humbled Babylon,

Ye cried, " Enough!"-and at the word Vengeance put out her torch, and slaughter sheath'd his sword

Princes, be this your praise!
And ne'er in after days

Let faction rude that spotless praise profane,
Or dare with license bold

The impious falsehood hold,

That Europe's genuine kings have ceased to reign, And that a weak adulterate race,

[place. Degenerate from their sires, pollutes high honour's

Breathe, breathe again, ye free,
The air of liberty,

The native air of wisdom, virtue, joy!

And, might ye know to keep

The golden wealth ye reap,

Not thrice ten years of terror and annoy,

Of mad destructive anarchy,

And pitiless oppression, were a price too high.

Vaulting ambition!

Thy bloody laurels torn,

And ravish'd from thy grasp the sin-bought prize; Or, if thy meteor fame

Still win the world's acclaim,

Let it behold thee now with alter'd eyes, And pass, but with a pitying smile, The hope-abandon'd chief of Elba's lonely isle.

FROM RUFINUS.

THIS garland intertwined with fragrant flowers,
Pluck'd by my hand, to thee, my love, I send,
Pale lilies here with blushing roses blend;

Anemone, besprent with April showers;
Lovelorn Narcissus; violet that pours

From every purple cup the glad perfume;
And, while upon thy sweeter breast they bloom,

Yield to the voice of love thy passing hours!
For thou, like these, wilt fade at nature's doom.

The sailor, midst the dangerous main,
Full many a lovely region sees,
Fair islands, bright with golden grain,
And rich with ever-blooming trees;
But, till the destined port he gains,
Those transient charms he little prizes,
And quits with joy the happiest plains
Soon as a favouring gale arises.

My fancy had a mistress drawn,

And stamp'd her image on my heart; I roved o'er hill and vale and lawn, But ne'er could find the counterpart : This had the form, the air, the face, That, the sweet smile's bewitching beauty, And every singly winning grace

Fix'd for the time my wandering duty.

But now 'tis sped-my fancy's flight:
All former trivial, vain desires,
Like spectres fade before the light,
Or perish in sublimer fires.
He needs not fear again to fall
Before the shadow of perfection,
Who for the bright original

Has dared avow his soul's election.

Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary

For such a world of thought could furnish scope? Each fading calyx a memento mori,

Yet fount of hope.

Posthumous glories! angel-like collection!
Upraised from seed or bulb interr'd in earth,
Ye are to me a type of resurrection,
A second birth.

Were I, O God! in churchless lands remaining,
Far from all voice of teachers or divines,
My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines!

THE HEAD OF MΕΜΝΟΝ.

IN Egypt's centre, when the world was young,
My statue soar'd aloft, a man-shaped tower,
O'er hundred-gated Thebes, by Homer sung,
And built by Apis' and Osiris' power.

When the sun's infant eye more brightly blazed,
I mark'd the labours of unwearied time;
And saw, by patient centuries up-raised,
Stupendous temples, obelisks sublime!
Hewn from the rooted rock, some mightier mound,
Some new colossus more enormous springs,
So vast, so firm, that, as I gazed around,

I thought them, like myself, eternal things.
Then did I mark in sacerdotal state,
Psammis the king, whose alabaster tomb,
(Such the inscrutable decrees of fate,)
Now floats athwart the sea to share my doom.

O Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world!
Still shalt thou soar, its everlasting boast;
When lo! the Persian standards were unfurl'd,
And fierce Cambyses led the invading host.

Where from the east a cloud of dust proceeds,
A thousand banner'd suns at once appear;
Nought else was seen;-but sound of neighing
steeds,

And faint barbaric music met mine ear. Onward they march, and foremost I descried, A cuirassed Grecian band, in phalanx dense, Around them throng'd, in oriental pride,

Commingled tribes a wild magnificence.
Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show,
Which Egypt's children worship and obey;
They fear to strike a sacrilegious blow,
And fall-a pious, unresisting prey.

Then, havoc leaguing with infuriate zeal,
Palaces, temples, cities are o'erthrown;
Apis is stabb'd!-Cambyses thrusts the steel,
And shuddering Egypt heaved a general groan!
The firm Memnonium mock'd their feeble power,
Flames round its granite columns hiss'd in vain,
The head of Isis, frowning o'er each tower,
Look'd down with indestructible disdain.

Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace :Beneath my shade a wondering army flock'd; With force combined, they wrench'd me from my base,

And earth beneath the dread concussion rock'd. Nile from his banks receded with affright,

The startled Sphinx long trembled at the sound; While from each pyramid's astounded height, The loosen'd stones slid rattling to the ground.

I watch'd, as in the dust supine I lay,

The fall of Thebes, -as I had mark'd its fame,-
Till crumbling down, as ages roll'd away,
Its site a lonely wilderness became!

The throngs that choked its hundred gates of yore,
Its fleets, its armies, were no longer seen;
Its priesthood's pomp, its Pharaohs were no more,-
All-all were gone as if they ne'er had been !

Deep was the silence now, unless some vast
And time-worn fragment thunder'd to its base;
Whose sullen echoes, o'er the desert cast,
Died in the distant solitude of space.

Or haply, in the palaces of kings,

Some stray jackal sate howling on the throne: Or, on the temple's holiest altar, springs

Some gaunt hyæna, laughing all alone.
Nature o'erwhelms the relics left by time;-
By slow degrees entombing all the land;
She buries every monument sublime,
Beneath a mighty winding-sheet of sand.
Vain is each monarch's unremitting pains,
Who in the rock his place of burial delves;
Behold! their proudest palaces and fanes
Are subterraneous sepulchres themselves.

Twenty-three centuries unmoved I lay,
And saw the tide of sand around me rise;
Quickly it threaten'd to engulf its prey,
And close in everlasting night mine eyes.
Snatch'd in this crisis from my yawning grave,
Belzoni roll'd me to the banks of Nile,
And slowly heaving o'er the western wave,
This massy fragment reach'd the imperial isle.

In London, now with face erect I gaze
On England's pallid sons, whose eyes upcast,
View my colossal features with amaze,
And deeply ponder on my glories past.

But who my future destiny shall guess?
Saint Paul's may lie, like Memnon's temple, low;
London, like Thebes, may be a wilderness,
And Thames, like Nile, through silent ruins flow.
Then haply may my travels be renew'd :-
Some transatlantic hand may break my rest,
And bear me from Augusta's solitude,

To some new seat of empire in the west.
Mortal! since human grandeur ends in dust,
And proudest piles must crumble to decay;
Build up the tower of thy final trust [away!
In those blest realms-where naught shall pass

MORAL RUINS.

ASIA's rock-hollow'd fanes, first-born of time,
In sculpture's prime,
Wrought by the ceaseless toil of many a race,
Whom none may trace,
Have crumbled back to wastes of ragged stone,
And formless caverns, desolate and lone.

Egypt's stern temples, whose colossal mound,
Sphinx-guarded, frown'd
From brows of granite challenges to fate
And human hate,

Are giant ruins in a desert land,
Or sunk to sculptured quarries in the sand.

The marble miracles of Greece and Rome,
Temple and dome,
Art's masterpieces, awful in th' excess
Of loveliness,
Hallow'd by statued gods which might be thought
To be themselves by the celestials wrought,-

Where are they now?-their majesty august,
Grovels in dust,
Time on their altars prone their ruins flings

As offerings
Forming a lair whence ominous bird and brute
Their wailful misereres howl and hoot.

Down from its height the Druid's sacred stone,
In sport is thrown,
And many a Christian fane have change and hate
Made desolate,
Prostrating saint, apostle, statue, bust,
With Pagan deities to mingle dust.

On these drear sepulchres of buried days
'Tis sad to gaze;
Yet, since their substances were perishable,
And hands unstable
Uprear'd their piles, no wonder that decay
Both man and monument should sweep away.

Ah me! how much more sadden'd is my mood,
How heart-subdued,
The rums and the wrecks when I behold,
By time unroll'd,
Of all the faiths that man hath ever known,
World-worshipp'd once-now spurn'd and over-

thrown!

Religions-from the soul deriving breath,

Should know no death, Yet do they perish, mingling their remains With fallen fanes.

Creeds, canons, dogmas, councils, are the wreck'd And mouldering masonry of intellect.

Apis, Osiris, paramount of yore,

On Egypt's shore,

Noden and Thor, through the wide north adored,
With blood outworn;

Jove, and the multiform divinities,
To whom the Pagan nations bent their knees, -

Lo! they are cast aside, dethroned, forlorn,
Defaced, outworn,

Revisiting the glimpses of the moon,Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures, But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs and features!

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect,

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?Was Cheops, or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer? Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden, By oath, to tell the mysteries of thy trade: Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise play'd? Perhaps thou wert a priest; if so, my struggles Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles!