The Poetical Works of Horace Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

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
How 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 ruins 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 overthrown!

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,
Woden and Thor, through the wide North adored,
With blood outpour'd;
Jove, and the multiform Divinities,
To whom the Pagan nations bow'd their knees,—

Lo! they are cast aside, dethroned, forlorn,
Defaced, out-worn,
Like the world's childish dolls, which but insult
Its age adult,
Or prostrate scarecrows, on whose rags we tread,
With scorn proportion'd to our former dread.

Alas for human reason! all is change
Ceaseless and strange;
All ages form new systems, leaving heirs
To cancel theirs:
The future can but imitate the past,
And instability alone will last.—

Is there no compass left, by which to steer
This erring sphere?
No tie that may indissolubly bind
To God, mankind?
No code that may defy time's sharpest tooth?
No fix'd, immutable, unerring truth?

There is! there is!—one primitive and sure
Religion pure,
Unchanged in spirit, though its forms and codes
Wear myriad modes,
Contains all creeds within its mighty span—
The love of God, displayed in love of Man.—

This is the Christian's faith, when rightly read;—
Oh! may it spread
Till Earth, redeem'd from every hateful leaven,
Makes peace with Heaven:
Below—one blessed brotherhood of love;
One Father—worshipp'd with one voice—above!