 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
203
ANCIENT.
My sympathies are all with times of old,I cannot live with upstarts of to-day,
But spirits cast in a severer mould,
Of solid worth, like elemental gold:
I love to wander o'er the classic past,
Dreaming of dynasties long swept away,
And feel myself at once the least and last
Of Time's Cyclopic race, decaying fast:
For I can dote upon the rare antique,
Conjuring up what story it might tell,
The bronze, or bead, or coin, or quaint relique;
And in a desert could delight to dwell
Among vast ruins,—Tadmor's stately halls,
Old Egypt's fanes, or Babel's mouldering walls.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |