Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. - Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levell'd battlements,

And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,

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Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;

But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,

A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

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And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon

All this, and cast a wide and tender light,

Which soften'd down the hoar austerity

Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,

As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;

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Leaving that beautiful which still was so,

And making that which was not, till the place

Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

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'Twas such a night!

'Tis strange that I recall it at this time;

But I have found our thoughts take wildest flight
Even at the moment when they should array
Themselves in pensive order.

[ST. PETER'S.]

CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV.

BUT lo! the dome

CLIII.

the vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana's marvel was a cell

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell

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The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd;

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,

Standest alone with nothing like to thee-
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook His former city, what could be,

Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,

Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;

And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow.

CLVI.

Thou movest but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

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Vastness which grows - but grows to harmonize ---
All musical in its immensities;

- richer painting-shrines where flame

Rich marbles

The lamps of gold—and haughty dome which vies

In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame 35

Sits on the firm-set ground — and this the clouds must

claim.

CLVII.

That ask the eye-so here condense thy soul

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the ocean many bays will make,

To more immediate objects, and control

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Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

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CLVIII.

Not by its fault - but thine: Our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp· - and as it is

That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice.

Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

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Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise

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Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
The fountain of sublimity displays

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Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man

Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

[THE OCEAN.]

CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV.

CLXXVIII.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean— roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

CLXXX.

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His steps are not upon thy paths — thy fields

Are not a spoil for him thou dost arise

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And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

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His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: — there let him lay.

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The Oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: - not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed

in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime
The image of Eternity— the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

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