Since all that is not Heaven must fade,

Light be the hand of Ruin laid

Upon the home I love:

With lulling spell let soft Decay

Steal on, and spare the giant sway,

The crash of tower and grove.

Far opening down some woodland deep

In their own quiet glade should sleep

The relics dear to thought,

And wild-flower wreaths from side to side

Their waving tracery hang, to hide

What ruthless Time has wrought.

Such are the visions green and sweet

That o’er the wistful fancy fleet

In Asia’s sea-like plain,

Where slowly, round his isles of sand,

Euphrates through the lonely land

Winds toward the pearly main.

Slumber is there, but not of rest;

There her forlorn and weary nest

The famish’d hawk has found,

The wild dog howls at fall of night,

The serpent’s rustling coils affright

The traveller on his round.

What shapeless form, half lost on high,⁶⁵⁶⁵See Sir R. K. Porter’s Travels, ii. 387. “In my second visit to Birs Nimrod, my party suddenly halted, having descried several dark objects moving along the summit of its hill, which they construed into dismounted Arabs on the lookout: I took out my glass to examine, and soon distinguished that the causes of our alarm were two or three majestic lions, taking the air upon the heights of the pyramid.”

Half seen against the evening sky,

Seems like a ghost to glide,

And watch, from Babel’s crumbling heap,

Where in her shadow, fast asleep,

Lies fallen imperial Pride?

With half-clos’d eye a lion there

Is basking in his noontide lair,

Or prowls in twilight gloom.

The golden city’s king he seems,

Such as in old prophetic dreams⁶⁶⁶⁶Daniel vii. 4.

Sprang from rough ocean’s womb.

But where are now his eagle wings,

That shelter’d erst a thousand kings,

Hiding the glorious sky

From half the nations, till they own

No holier name, no mightier throne?

That vision is gone by.

Quench’d is the golden statue’s ray,⁶⁷⁶⁷Daniel ii. and iii.

The breath of heaven has blown away

What toiling earth had pil’d,

Scattering wise heart and crafty hand,

As breezes strew on ocean’s sand

The fabrics of a child.

Divided thence through every age

Thy rebels, Lord, their warfare wage,

And hoarse and jarring all

Mount up their heaven-assailing cries

To Thy bright watchmen in the skies

From Babel’s shatter’d wall.

Thrice only since, with blended might

The nations on that haughty height

Have met to scale the Heaven:

Thrice only might a Seraph’s look

A moment’s shade of sadness brook —

Such power to guilt was given.

Now the fierce bear and leopard keen⁶⁸⁶⁸Daniel vii. 5, 6.

Are perish’d as they ne’er had been,

Oblivion is their home:

Ambition’s boldest dream and last

Must melt before the clarion blast

That sounds the dirge of Rome.

Heroes and kings, obey the charm,

Withdraw the proud high-reaching arm,

There is an oath on high:

That ne’er on brow of mortal birth

Shall blend again the crowns of earth,

Nor in according cry

Her many voices mingling own

One tyrant Lord, one idol throne:

But to His triumphs soon

HE shall descend, who rules above,

And the pure language of His love,⁶⁹⁶⁹Then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent. Zephaniah iii. 9.

All tongues of men shall tune.

Nor let Ambition heartless mourn;

When Babel’s very ruins burn,

Her high desires may breathe; —

O’ercome thyself, and thou mayst share

With Christ His Father’s throne,⁷⁰⁷⁰To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne. Revelations iii. 21. and wear

The world’s imperial wreath.