Julia Alpinula :: :: University of Virginia Library

As brightly wild the hours of Glory run,
So throng her shadows, and so sinks her sun;
That brilliant Circle which the day-star drew
Round Nature, is her type of being too:
See first how splendour's rushing rays adorn
The peopled towers of empire in her morn;
Thither the yet barbaric nations pour,
And Battle's blast is blown from shore to shore.

140

By fire and freedom in her bright noon nursed,
The glow of genius is a glorious thirst;
Then Power his pinnacle bestrides, and we
View Taste spring forth, like Venus from the sea,
Radiant, and pure, and goddess-like to draw
High aspirations, settling into awe.
Last Pride and Luxury, wedded to decay,
Conceal, in clouds, the ruins of her ray;
Faint, and more faint, upon the dial falls
That ray, long shadows creep o'er crumbling walls;
When that, her sunshine of renown expires,
The sons forget the grandeur of their sires;
Heroes are shrunk to vassals; deeds sublime
Are scoffed; and Liberty becomes a crime;
Scarce known, through Slavery's gathering shadows flit,
Like ghosts, the forms of Wisdom and of Wit;
Taste breaks her pencil; Hope her charmed glass,—
Another age—and her descendants pass
O'er altars rent, and sculptures green with grass;
From gilded halls, the crouching tiger springs,
And ivy crests the Capitols of kings;
Doubt on his moonlit marbles sits, and spells
Disputed names, and cancelled chronicles;
And as the melancholy wind repines
Through vacant temples, and deserted shrines,
Sighs o'er the vigils which his fondness keeps,
Or sickens at the solitude and weeps.