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O Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world!
Still shalt thou soar, its everlasting boast;
When lo! the Persian standards were unfurl'd,
And fierce Cambyses led the invading host.

When from the Fast a cloud of dust proceeds,
A thousand banner'd suns at once appear;
Naught else was seen;--but sound of neighing
steeds,

And faint barbaric music met mine ear.

Onward they march, and foremost I descried,
A cuirass'd Grecian band, in phalanx dense,
Around them throng'd, in oriental pride,

Commingled tribes--a wild magnificence.

Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show,
Which Egypt's children worship and obey;
They fear to strike a sacrilegious blow,
And fall-a pious, unresisting prey.

Then, havock leaguing with infuriate zeal,
Palaces, temples, cities are o'erthrown;
Apis is stabb'd!-Cambyses thrusts the steel,
And shuddering Egypt heaved a general groan!
The firm Memnonium mock'd their feeble power,
Flames round its granite columns hiss'd in vain,-
The head of Isis frowning o'er each tower,
Look'd down with indestructible disdain.

Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace: Beneath my shade a wondering army flock'd, With force combined, they wrench'd me from my base,

And earth beneath the dread concussion rock'd.

Nile from his banks receded with affright,

The startled Sphinx long trembled at the sound, While from each pyramid's astounded height,

The loosen'd stones slid rattling to the ground.

I watch'd, as in the dust supine I lay,

The fall of Thebes,-as I had mark'd its fame,Till crumbling down, as ages roll'd away,

Its site a lonely wilderness became !

The throngs that chok'd its hundred gates of yore;
Its fleets, its armies, were no longer seen;
Its priesthood's pomp,-its Pharaohs were no more,-
All-all were gone-as if they ne'er had been!

Deep was the silence now, unless some vast
And time-worn fragment thunder'd to its base;
Whose sullen echoes, o'er the desert cast,
Died in the distant solitude of space.

Or haply, in the palaces of kings,

Some stray jackal sat howling on the throne:
Or, on the temple's holiest altar, springs
Some gaunt hyæna, laughing all alone.

Nature o'erwhelms the relics left by time;-
By slow degrees entombing all the land;
She buries every monument sublime,

Beneath a mighty winding-sheet of sand.

Vain is each monarch's unremitting pains,
Who in the rock his place of burial delves;
Behold their proudest palaces and fanes
And subterraneous sepulchres themselves.

Twenty-three centuries unmoved I lay,
And saw the tide of sand around me rise;
Quickly it threaten'd to engulf its prey,
And close in everlasting night mine eyes.

Snatch'd in this crisis from my yawning grave,
Belzoni roll'd me to the banks of Nile,
And slowly heaving o'er the western wave,
This massy fragment reach'd the imperial isle.

In London, now with face erect I gaze
On England's pallid sons, whose eyes upcast
View my colossal features with amaze,
And deeply ponder on my glories past.

But who my future destiny shall guess?

Saint Paul's may lie-like Memnon's templelow;

London, like Thebes, may be a wilderness,

And Thames, like Nile, through silent ruins flow.

Then haply may my travels be renew'd:-
Some Transatlantic hand may break my rest,
And bear me from Augusta's solitude,

To some new seat of empire in the west.

Mortal! since human grandeur ends in dust,
And proudest piles must crumble to decay;
Build up the tower of thy final trust

In those bless'd realms-where naught shall pass away!

HORACE SMITH.

MONT BLANC.

THOU monarch of the upper air,
Thou mighty temple given

For morning's earliest of light,

And evening's last of heaven.

The vapour from the marsh, the smoke

From crowded cities sent,

Are purified before they reach

Thy loftier element.

Thy hues are not of earth but heaven;

Only the sunset rose

Hath leave to fling a crimson dye

Upon thy stainless snows.

Now out on those adventurers
Who scaled thy breathless height,
And made thy pinnacle, Mont Blanc,
A thing for common sight.

Before that human step had felt
Its sully on thy brow,

The glory of thy forehead made
A shrine to those below:

Men gazed upon thee as a star,
And turn'd to earth again,

With dreams like thine own floating clouds

The vague but not the vain.

No feelings are less vain than those
That bear the mind away,

Till blent with nature's mysteries
It half forgets its clay.

It catches loftier impulses;
And owns a nobler power;
The poet and philosopher
Are born of such an hour.

But now where may we seek a place
For any spirit's dream;

Our steps have been o'er every soil,
Our sails o'er every stream.

Those isles, the beautiful Azores,

The fortunate, the fair!

We look'd for their perpetual spring
To find it was not there.

Bright El Dorado, land of gold,
We have so sought for thee,
There's not a spot in all the globe
Where such a land can be.

How pleasant were the wild beliefs
That dwelt in legends old!

Alas! to our posterity

Will no such tales be told.

We know too much, scroll after scroll
Weighs down our weary shelves;

Our only point of ignorance
Is centred in ourselves.
Alas! for thy past mystery,
For thine untrodden snow,

Nurse of the tempest, hast thou none

To guard thy outraged brow?

MISS LANDON.

THE SWITZER'S WIFE.

THE bright blood left the youthful mother's cheek; Back on the linden-stem she lean'd her form; And her lip trembled, as it strove to speak,

Like a frail harp-string, shaken by the storm. 'Twas but a moment, and the faintness pass'd, And the free Alpine spirit woke at last.

And she, that ever through her home had moved
With the meek thoughtfulness and quiet smile
Of woman, calmly loving and beloved,

And timid in her happiness the while,

Stood brightly forth, and steadfastly, that hour,
Her clear glance kindling into sudden power.

Ay, pale she stood, but with an eye of light,
And took her fair child to her holy breast,
And lifted her soft voice, that gather'd might
As it found language -Are we thus oppress'd?
Then must we rise upon our mountain-sod,
And man must arm, and woman call on God!

I know what thou wouldst do,-and be it done!
Thy soul is darken'd with its fears for me.
Trust me to Heaven, my husband!-this, thy son,
The babe whom I have borne thee, must be free;
And the sweet memory of our pleasant hearth
May well give strength-if aught be strong on earth.

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