University of Virginia Library

FORGOTTEN AGES

From yon high chamber, on whose naked walls
The slanting ray of rosy morning falls—
Where kind Aurora showers her earliest beams
To wake the sleeper from delusive dreams—
Where playful zephyrs riot through the floor
Laugh at the cracks and revel round the door—
From that bright home the poet gladly flies
To meet the radiance of these brighter eyes.
What various beauties crowd upon my sight
Flash from the left and sparkle from the right.
The matron's sweetness and the maiden's bloom—
The flaunting ribband and the waving plume—
Blushes that saucers never owned before
And looks unpurchased from the fancy-store—
In queenly pride the lofty head-dress towers
And bonnets blossom with unfading flowers—
Their different charms the smiling sisters blend,
All nature gives, and all that art can lend.
—O envious time, could not thy chariot stay
A moment longer on its silent way?
Must all they glories burst upon the eye,
Like angel's pinions, only as they fly!
How short our empire on this little stage!
How swift these moments in the train of age!
In vain the light that beauty sheds around
To stay our footsteps on the enchanted ground.
Time waves his wand—the short-lived pageant flies
And other hours, and other forms arise.
—As fades the memory of an idle day
The name of ages hastens to decay:
Wrapped in the past, in darkness disappears
The gleam of moments and the light of years.
—O where, forgotten in the silent shade
Are all the forms, that once had being, laid?
Where sunk the palace and where fell the throne
On which the sun of ancient splendor shone?
Nations have been where we may look in vain
For one frail remnant on the voiceless plain.
Unchecked the mind around the desert flows
Where proud Ambition's lofty turrets rose.
Some wasted slowly into dull decay
Till stone by stone, their grandeur dropped away.
The conqueror came, and in a single hour
Fell the bright trophies of imperial power.
Some sank beneath the red volcanic wave
And after ages trod their burning grave—
The surge has rolled o'er many an ancient shore
And Ocean sweeps where man has reigned before.
—Quenched is the lustre of the glancing eye—
Cold is the heart that once beat warm and high—
The lips that nature only formed for smiles
Lie in the ashes of their buried piles.
In thousand paths the subtle shafts have fled
And none is left—the herald of the dead.
The torch of famine seared the dying land,
The warrior fell beneath another's hand.
And slow disease hath wasted many a form,
That rode in triumph on the battle-storm.
—They sleep, unconscious that the hour has come
When all that echoed to their voice is dumb;
Alike to them if o'er their dark repose
The forest blossoms or the ocean flows.
The hand of spring their funeral chaplet weaves,
And autumn strews them with his withered leaves;
Or wildly murmuring round their stormy home
The towering billow stoops its crest of foam.
In vain they bade their mausoleums rise,
And reared their pillars till they reached the skies.
No stone is rescued from the dust to tell
Where once they stood and where at last they fell
—O'er other lands that wore the crown of old
The shroud of age is gathering fold by fold.
But still half-lost amid the deepening gloom
The dying sun-beam plays around their tomb.
Though art has risen from her native clime
All is not darkened in the clouds of time;
We trace her brightness in the lingering glow
Her foot has kindled while it walked below.
The stately relics of departed pride—
The temple mouldering by its builder's side.
The prostrate column and the fallen shrine
Point to the days that saw their glory shine,
And tell the stranger on their hallowed ground
That man is crumbling in the soil around.
And some have lived, if that be life which Fame,
When all is dust, can lavish on a name;
Still rings the harp that Athens loved to hear
And bright-eyed Thalia woos the modern's ear.
But they who called her from the mountain-steep—
Can music wake them from their silent sleep?—
—And we, the children of a later birth,
The transient monarchs of this changing earth,
We too shall pass and leave no single trace
To fix our memory on some future race.
Our heroes glory in the crimson wreath
Their hands have wrested from the brow of death
They little see it, in their fevered dream,
Torn by the ripple of the noiseless stream:
Our rulers frame their statutes for the free
Of after ages that shall never be.
The luckless votaries of Apollo's lyre
Catch far more real than poetic fire;
And vainly scatter from their pictured urns,
Not “thoughts that breathe,” but “many a word that burns.”
—So flies a moment, and so rolls an age,
Monarchs and poets quit alike the stage;
They leave at last their sceptre and their crown,
We gently bow and lay our laurels down.
If our young Muse has managed to beguile
Her fairer sisters of one favoring smile—
If hard-heeled students and if booted boys
Will aid her exit with their flattering noise—
If sterner age will spare the humble lays
And kindly pardon what it cannot praise,
Though e'er tomorrow it shall be forgot,
That she has hovered round this little spot,
Without a murmur that her feeble wings
Must share the fate of empires and of kings,
No longer fluttering in your wearied sight,
She folds her mantle and she takes her flight.