University of Virginia Library

THE MIAMI MOUNDS.

Wrecks of lost nations! monuments of deeds,
Immortal once—but all forgotten now!
Mysterious ruins of a race unknown,
As proud of ancestry, and pomp, and fame—
Prouder, perchance, than those who ponder here
O'er what their wild conjectures cannot solve!
Who raised these mouldering battlements? who trod
In jealous glory on these ruined walls?—
Who reigned, who triumphed, or who perished here?
What scenes of revelry, and mirth, and crime,
And love, and hate, and bliss and bale have passed?
Ah! none can tell. Oblivion's dusky folds
Shroud all the Past, and none may lift the pall;
Or, if they could, what would await the eye
Of antique research, but the fleshless forms
Of olden time; dark giant bones that tell—
Nothing! dim mysteries of the earth and air!
Since human passions met in conflict here,
The woods of centuries have grown—and oft
And long, the timid deer hath bounded o'er
The sepulchre of warriors, and wild birds
Sung notes of love o'er slaughter's crimson field.
And the gaunt wolf and catamount and fox
Have made their couches in the embattled towers
Of dauntless chiefs, nor dreamt of danger there!
Princes and kings—the wise, the great, the good,
May slumber here, and blend their honoured dust
With Freedom's soil; and navies may have rode
On the same wave that bears our starry sails.
Here heroes may have bled to win a name
On Glory's sunbright scroll, and prophets watched
Their holy shrines, whose fires no longer glow.
Sweet rose and woodbine bowers around these walls
May once have bloomed less fragrant and less fair
Than the fond hearts that blended, and the lips
That pressed in passion's rapture; and these airs,
That float unconscious by, may have been born
Of gales, that bore Love's soft enchanting words.
But all is silent now as Death's own halls!
Empires have perished where these forests tower
In desolate array—and nations sunk,
With all their glories, to the darkling gulf
Of cold forgetfulness!—But what avails
The uncertain quest, the dark and wildering search
For those whose spirits have but passed away
To the dark land of shadows and of dreams,
An hour before our own? Why in amaze
Behold these shattered walls, when other times
Shall hang in wondering marvel o'er our own
Proud cities, and inquire—“Who builded these?”