 | The Two Brothers, and other poems |  |
XXVII
These harpings ceased, and when I look'd again,Fire, sword, and famine their fell work had done.
The city lay in ruin on the plain:
Her shrines, her palaces, her monarch's throne,
One mingled mass of crumbling earth and stone.
Time digg'd thy grave, and heap'd the dust on thee;
Soon died the echo of thy dying groan;
And travellers, who came thy wreck to see,
Ask'd, and received no answer—Where is Nineveh?
XXVIII
. . . It is the evening of the world. The sunCasts level shadows o'er its restless tide;
And though dense clouds, before his race be run,
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The nations still all signs of night deride,
And to and fro are hurrying thro' the earth
By ancient tracks or pathways yet untried
To satisfy their souls' insatiate dearth
With riches or with fame, or pleasure's idiot-mirth.
XXIX
Men throng all paths of knowledge, urging stillInto the vast unknown their perilous way;
Wielding all powers of nature to their will,
To-day they spurn the speed of yesterday,
And travel with the storms, nor brook delay.
And swifter than the eagle's swiftest wing
They bind their words upon the lightning's ray,
And from the elements new virtues wring,
To sound the lowest depths of truth's exhaustless spring.
XXX
Men throng all paths of knowledge. Science divesBelow the ocean's bed, the mountain's base,
And from the bowels of creation rives
Those monumental stones which dimly trace
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Above our little orb, and speeds afar
Mid distant planets her unwearied chase,
Skirting their track as in a seraph's car
From luminous world to world, from gorgeous star to star.
XXXI
Men throng all paths of knowledge. It might seemEarth was now launch'd upon the early source
Of time's illimitably-flowing stream;
But trace the windings of her backward course,
Her centuries of crime and dark remorse,
And learn these struggles ne'er can be renew'd;—
The feverish efforts of exhausted force,—
The latest ebb of strength almost subdued,—
The sure and fearful signs of near decrepitude.
XXXII
See how upon those ancient haunts she dwells,Where first her prowess and her power began;
And lingers there instinctively, and tells
Her antique story like an aged man,
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And all the trophies of his early prime;
Too conscious that his brief remaining span
Waits only for the solemn passing chime,
To warn us he hath done with all the things of time.
XXXIII
She treads again the wastes of Babylon,And roams amid Etrurian tombs once more,
And fondly lingers where the setting sun
Gilds ancient Carthage, or the fabled shore,
Where Greece and Troy were lock'd in fight of yore,
And listens to their story as the last
Faint halo of a day too quickly o'er;
For soon her bright futurity shall cast
Into deep twilight shade the glory of the past.
XXXIV
And what although this latest age hath rivenThe veil which hides thy shames, O Nineveh,
From all the taunts of earth and frowns of heaven;
Though distant nations crave admiringly
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Though from far lands the lonely traveller
Wanders thy ruin and thy wreck to see;—
Who shall recall to life the things that were?
Or wake the spectral forms of thy vast sepulchre?
XXXV
No, while the ages of this shatter'd worldRoll slowly to the final term of time,
There shalt thou lie in desolation, hurl'd
By vengeance from that pinnacle sublime
Whereon thou satest in thy glory's prime—
By travellers of every nation trod,
Jehovah's warning unto every clime,
Scathed with His anger, smitten with His rod,
And witnessing to man the eternal truth of God.
| The Two Brothers, and other poems | |