<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=529870" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Palmyra (1st Edition)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">---anankta ton pantôn huperbal-<br>lonta chronon makarôn.<br>Pindar. Hymn. frag. 33</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the mountain-torrent rages,<br>Loud, impetuous, swift, and strong,<br>So the rapid streams of ages<br>Rolls with ceaseless tide along.<br>Man's little day what clouds o'ercast!<br>How soon his longest day is past!<br>All-conquering DEATH, in solemn date unfurl'd,<br>Comes, like the burning desert blast,<br>And sweeps him from the world.<br>The noblest works of human pow'r<br>In vain resist the fate-fraught hour;<br>The marble hall, the rock-built tow'r,<br>Alike submit to destiny:<br>OBLIVION's awful storms resound;<br>The massy columns fall around;<br>The fabric totters to the ground,<br>And darkness veils its memory!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Mid SYRIA's barren world of sand,<br>Where THEDMOR's marble wastes expand.<br>Where DESOLATION, on the blasted plain,<br>Has fix'd his adamantine throne,<br>I mark, in silence and alone,<br>His melancholy reign.<br>These silent wrecks, more eloquent than speech,<br>Full many a tale of awful note impart;<br>Truths more sublime than bard or sage can teach<br>This pomp of ruin presses on the heart.<br>Whence rose that dim, mysterious sound,<br>That breath'd in hollow murmurs round?<br>As sweeps the gale<br>Along the vale,<br>Where many a mould'ring tomb is spread,<br>Awe-struck, I hear,<br>In fancy's ear,<br>The voices of th' illustrious dead:<br>As slow they pass along, they seem to sigh,<br>&quot;Man, and the works of man, are only born to die!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As scatter'd round, a dreary space,<br>Ye spirits of the wise and just!<br>In reverential thought I trace<br>The mansions of your sacred dust,<br>Enthusiast FANCY, rob'd in light,<br>Pours on the air her many-sparkling rays,<br>Redeeming from OBLIVION's deep'ning night<br>The deeds of ancient days.<br>The mighty forms of chiefs of old,<br>To VIRTUE dear, and PATRIOT TRUTH sublime,<br>In feeble splendor I behold,<br>Discover'd dimly through the mists of TIME,<br>As through the vapours of the mountain-stream<br>With pale reflection glows the sun's declining beam.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still as twilight's mantle hoary<br>Spreads progressive on the sky,<br>See, in visionary glory,<br>Darkly-thron'd, they sit on high.<br>But whose the forms, oh FAME, declare,<br>That crowd majestic on the air?<br>Bright Goddess! come, on rapid wings,<br>To tell the mighty deeds of kings.<br>Where art thou, FAME?<br>Each honor'd name<br>From thy eternal roll unfold:<br>Awake the lyre,<br>In songs of fire,<br>To chiefs renown'd in days of old.<br>I call in vain!<br>The welcome strain<br>Of praise to them no more shall sound:<br>Their actions bright<br>Must sleep in night,<br>Till TIME shall cease his mystic round.<br>The dazzling glories of their day<br>The stream of years has swept away;<br>Their names, that struck the foe with fear,<br>Shall ring no more on mortal ear!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>V</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet faithful MEMORY's raptur'd eye<br>Can still the godlike form descry,<br>Of him, who, on EUPHRATES' shore,<br>From SAPOR's brow his blood-stain'd laurels tore,<br>And bade the ROMAN banner stream unfurl'd;<br>When the stern GENIUS of the startling waves<br>Beheld on PERSIA s host of slaves<br>Tumultuous ruin hurl'd!<br>Meek SCIENCE too, and TASTE refin'd,<br>The grave with deathless flow'rs have dress'd,<br>Of him whose virtue-kindling mind<br>Their ev'ry charm supremely bless'd;<br>Who trac'd the mazy warblings of the lyre<br>With all a critic's art, and all a poet's fire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where is the bard, in these degen'rate days,<br>To whom the muse the blissful meed awards,<br>Again the dithyrambic song to raise,<br>And strike the golden harp's responsive chords?<br>Be his alone the song to swell,<br>The all-transcendent praise to tell<br>Of yon immortal form,<br>That bursting through the veil of years,<br>In changeless majesty appears,<br>Bright as the sun-beams thro' the scatt'ring storm!<br>What countless charms around her rise!<br>What dazzling splendor sparkles in her eyes!<br>On her radiant brow enshrin'd,<br>MINERVA's beauty blends with JUNO's grace;<br>The matchless virtues of her godlike mind<br>Are stamp'd conspicuous on her angel-face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hail, sacred shade, to NaATURE dear!<br>Though sorrow clos'd thy bright career,<br>Though clouds obscur'd thy setting day,<br>Thy fame shall never pass away!<br>Long shall the mind's unfading gaze<br>Retrace thy pow'r's meridian blaze,<br>When o'er ARABIAN deserts, vast and wild,<br>And EGYPT s land, (where REASON's wakeful eye<br>First on the birth of ART and SCIENCE smil'd,<br>And bade the shades of mental darkness fly)<br>And o'er ASSYRIA's many-peopled plains,<br>By Justice led, thy conqu'ring armies pour'd,<br>When humbled nations kiss'd thy silken chains,<br>Or fled dismay'd from zABDAS ' victor-sword:<br>Yet vain the hope to share the purple robe,<br>Or snatch from ROMAN arms the empire of the globe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Along the wild and wasted plain<br>His veteran bands the ROMAN monarch led,<br>And rolled his burning wheels o'er heaps of slain:<br>The prowling chacal heard afar<br>The devastating yell of war,<br>And rush'd, with gloomy howl, to banquet on the dead!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For succour to PALMYRA's walls<br>Her trembling subjects fled, confounded,<br>But wide amid her regal halls<br>The whirling fires resounded.<br>Onward the hostile legions pour'd:<br>Nor beauteous youth, nor helpless age,<br>Nor female charms, by savage breasts ador'd,<br>Could check the ROMAN's barb'rous rage,<br>Or blunt the murd'rous sword.<br>Loud, long, and fierce, the voice of slaughter roar'd,<br>The night-shades fell, the work of death was o'er,<br>PALMYRA's sun had set, to rise no more!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>X</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What mystic form, uncouth and dread,<br>With wither'd cheek, and hoary head,<br>Swift as the death-fire cleaves the sky,<br>Swept on sounding pinions by?<br>'Twas TIME: I know the FOE OF KINGS,<br>His scythe, and sand, and eagle wings:<br>He cast a burning look around,<br>And wav'd his bony hand, and frown'd.<br>Far from the spectre's scowl of fire<br>FANCY's feeble forms retire,<br>Her air-born phantoms melt away,<br>Like stars before the rising day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, all are flown!<br>I stand alone,<br>At ev'ning's calm and pensive hour,<br>Mid wasted domes,<br>And mould'ring tombs,<br>The wrecks of vanity and pow'r.<br>One shadowy tint enwraps the plain;<br>No form is near, no sounds intrude,<br>To break the melancholy reign<br>Of silence and of solitude.<br>How oft, in scenes like these, since TIME began,<br>With downcast eye has CONTEMPLATION trod,<br>Far from the haunts of FOLLY, VICE, and MAN,<br>To hold sublime communion with her GOD!<br>How oft, in scenes like these, the pensive sage<br>Has mourn'd the hand of FATE, severely just,<br>WAR's wasteful course, and DEATH's unsparing rage,<br>And dark OBLIVION, frowning in the dust!<br>Has mark'd the tombs, that king's o'erthrown declare,<br>Just wept their fall, and sunk to join them there!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In yon proud fane, majestic in decay,<br>How oft of old the swelling hymn arose,<br>In loud thanksgiving to the LORD OF DAY,<br>Or pray'r for vengeance on triumphant foes!<br>'Twas there, ere yet AURELIAN's hand<br>Had kindled Ruin's smould'ring brand,<br>As slowly mov'd the sacred choir<br>Around the altar's rising fire,<br>The priest, with wild and glowing eye,<br>Bade the flow'r-bound victim die;<br>And while he fed the incense-flame,<br>With many a holy mystery,<br>Prophetic inspiration came<br>To teach th' impending destiny,<br>And shook his venerable frame<br>With most portentous augury!<br>In notes of anguish, deep and slow,<br>He told the coming hour of woe;<br>The youths and maids, with terror pale,<br>In breathless torture heard the tale,<br>And silence hung<br>On ev'ry tongue,<br>While thus the voice prophetic rung:</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Whence was the hollow scream of fear,<br>Whose tones appall'd my shrinking ear?<br>Whence was the modulated cry,<br>That seem'd to swell, and hasten by?<br>What sudden blaze illum'd the night?<br>Ha! 'twas DESTRUCTION's meteor-light!<br>Whence was the whirlwind's eddying breath?<br>Ha! 'twas the fiery blast of DEATH!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">See! the mighty God of Battle<br>Spreads abroad his crimson train!<br>Discord's myriad voices rattle<br>O'er the terror-shaken plain.<br>Banners stream, and helmets glare,<br>Show'ring arrows hiss in air;<br>Echoing through the darken'd skies,<br>Wildly-mingling murmurs rise,<br>The clash of splendor-beaming steel,<br>The buckler ringing hollowly,<br>The cymbal's silver-sounding peal,<br>The last deep groan of agony,<br>The hurrying feet<br>Of wild retreat,<br>The lengthening shout of victory!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;O'er our plains the vengeful stranger<br>Pours, with hostile hopes elate:<br>Who shall check the coming danger?<br>Who escape the coming fate?<br>Thou! that through the heav'ns afar,<br>When the shades of night retire,<br>Proudly roll'st thy shining car,<br>Clad in sempiternal fire!<br>Thou! from whose benignant light<br>Fiends of darkness, strange and fell,<br>Urge their ebon-pinion'd flight<br>To the central caves of hell!<br>Sun ador'd! attend our call!<br>Must thy favor'd people fall?<br>Must we leave our smiling plains,<br>To groan beneath the stranger's chains ?<br>Rise, supreme in heav'nly pow'r,<br>On our foes destruction show'r;<br>Bid thy fatal arrows fly,<br>Till their armies sink and die;<br>Through their adverse legions spread<br>Pale Disease, and with'ring Dread,<br>Wild Confusion's fev'rish glare,<br>Horror, Madness, and Despair!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Woe to thy numbers fierce and rude,<br>Thou madly-rushing multitude,<br>Loud as the tempest that o'er ocean raves!<br>Woe to the nations proud and strong,<br>That rush tumultuously along,<br>As rolls the foaming stream its long-resounding waves!<br>As the noise of mighty seas,<br>As the loudly-murmuring breeze,<br>Shall gath'ring nations rush, a pow'rful band:<br>Rise, God of Light, in burning wrath severe,<br>And stretch, to blast their proud career,<br>Thy arrow-darting hand!<br>Then shall their ranks to certain~fate be giv'n,<br>Then on their course Despair her fires shall cast,<br>Then shall they fly, to endless ruin driv'n,<br>As flies the thistle-down before the mountain-blast l</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Alas! in vain, in vain we call!<br>The stranger triumphs in our fall!<br>And Fate comes on, with ruthless frown,<br>To strike Palmyra's splendor down.<br>Urg'd by the steady breath of Time,<br>The desert-whirlwind sweeps sublime,<br>The eddying sands in mountain-columns rise:<br>Borne on the pinions of the gale,<br>In one concenter'd cloud they sail;<br>Along the darken'd skies.<br>It falls! it falls! on Thedmor's walls<br>The whelming weight of ruin falls<br>Th' avenging thunder-bolt is hurl'd,<br>Her pride is blotted from the world,<br>Her name unknown in story:<br>The trav'ller on her site shall stand,<br>And seek, amid the desert-sand, <br>The records of her glory!<br>Her palaces are crush'd, her tow'rs o'erthrown,<br>Oblivion follows stern, and marks her for his own!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How oft, the festal board around,<br>These time-worn walls among,<br>Has rung the full symphonious sound<br>Of rapture-breathing song!<br>Ah! little thought the wealthy proud,<br>When rosy pleasure laugh'd aloud,<br>That here, amid their ancient land,<br>The wand'rer of the distant days<br>Should mark, with sorrow-clouded gaze,<br>The mighty wilderness of sand;<br>While not a sound should meet his ear,<br>Save of the desert-gales that sweep,<br>In modulated murmurs deep,<br>The wasted graves above,<br>Of those who once had revell'd here,<br>In happiness and love!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Short is the space to man assign'd<br>This earthly vale to tread<br>He wanders, erring, weak, and blind,<br>By adverse passions led.<br>Love, the balm of ev'ry woe,<br>The dearest blessing man can know;<br>Jealousy, whose pois'nous breath<br>Blasts affection's opining bud;<br>Stern Despair, that laughs in death;<br>Black Revenge, that bathes in blood;<br>Fear, that his form in darkness shrouds,<br>And trembles at the whisp'ring air;<br>And Hope, that pictures on the clouds<br>Celestial visions, false, but fair;<br>All rule by turns:<br>To-day he burns<br>With ev'ry pang of keen distress;<br>To-morrow's sky<br>Bids sorrow fly<br>With dreams of promis'd happiness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From the earliest twilight-ray,<br>That mark'd Creation's natal day,<br>Till yesterday's declining fire,<br>Thus still have roll'd, perplex'd by strife,<br>The many-clashing wheels of life,<br>And still shall roll, till Time's last beams expire<br>And thus, in ev'ry age, in ev'ry clime,<br>While circling years shall fly,<br>The varying deeds that mark the present time<br>Will be but shadows of the days gone by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Along the desolated shore,<br>Where, broad and swift, Euphrates flows,<br>The trav'ller's anxious eye can trace no more<br>The spot where once the Queen of Cities rose.<br>Where old Persepolis sublimely tow'r'd,<br>In cedar-groves embow'r'd,<br>A rudely-splendid wreck alone remains,<br>The course of Fate no pomp or pow'r can shun<br>Pollution tramples on thy giant-fanes,<br>Oh City of the Sun!<br>Fall'n are the Tyrian domes of wealth and joy, <br>The hundred gates of Thebes, the tow'rs of Troy;<br>In shame and sorrow pre-ordain'd to cease,<br>Proud Salem met th' irrevocable doom;<br>In darkness sunk the arts and arms of Greece,<br>And the long glories of imperial Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the tyrants iron hand<br>The mountain-piles of Memphis rais'd,<br>That still the storms of angry Time defy, <br>In self-adoring thought he gaz'd,<br>And bade the massive labors stand,<br>Till Nature's self should die!;<br>Presumptuous fool! the death-wind came,<br>And swept away thy worthless name;<br>And ages, with insidious flow,<br>Shall lay those blood-bought fabrics low.<br>Then shall the stranger pause, and oft be told,<br>&quot;Here stood the mighty Pyramids of old!&quot;<br>And smile, half-doubtful, when the tale he hears,<br>That speaks the wonders of the distant years</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though Night awhile usurp the skies,<br>Yet soon the smiling Morn shall rise,<br>And light and life restore;<br>Again the sun-beams gild the plain;<br>The youthful day returns again,<br>But man returns no more.<br>Though Winter's frown severe<br>Deform the wasted year,<br>Spring smiles again, with renovated bloom;<br>But what sweet Spring, with genial breath,<br>Shall chase the icy sleep of death,<br>The dark and cheerless winter of the tomb ?<br>Hark! from the mansions of the dead,<br>What thrilling sounds of deepest import spread I<br>Sublimely mingled with the eddying gale,<br>Full on the desert-air these solemn accents sail:</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Unthinking man! and cost thou weep,<br>That clouds o'ercast thy little day?<br>That Death's stern hands so quickly sweep<br>Thy ev'ry earthly hope away?<br>Thy rapid hours in darkness flow, '<br>But well those rapid hours employ,<br>And they shall lead from realms of woe<br>To realms of everlasting joy.<br>For though thy Father and thy God<br>Wave o'er thy head his chast'ning rod,<br>Benignantly severe,<br>Yet future blessings shall repair,<br>In tenfold measure, ev'ry care,<br>That marks thy progress here.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XXV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;BOW THEN TO HIM, FOR HE IS GOOD,<br>And loves the works His hands have made;<br>In earth, in air, in fire, in flood,<br>His parent-bounty shines display'd.<br>BOW THEN TO HIM, FOR HE IS JUST,<br>Though mortals scan His ways in vain;<br>Repine not, children of the dust!<br>For HE in mercy sends ye pain.<br>BOW THEN TO HIM, FOR HE IS GREAT,<br>And was, ere NATURE, TIME, and FATE,<br>Began their mystic flight;<br>And still shall be, when consummating flame<br>Shall plunge this universal frame<br>In everlasting night.<br>BOW THEN TO HIM, the LORD of ALL.<br>Whose nod bids empires rise and fall,<br>EARTH, HEAV'N, and NATURE's SIRE;<br>To HIM, Who, matchless and alone,<br>Has fix'd in boundless space His throne,<br>Unchang'd, unchanging still,while worlds and suns expire!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Thomas+Love+Peacock">Thomas Love Peacock</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=529870" data-title="Palmyra (1st Edition) de Thomas Love Peacock" data-description="---anankta ton pantôn huperbal- lonta chronon makarôn. Pindar. Hymn. frag. 33 I As the mountain-torrent rages, Loud, impetuous, swift, and strong, So the rapid streams of ages Rolls with ceaseless tide along. Man's little day what clouds o'er..."></div> </div> </div>

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