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What, then, are the dwellers in houses of clay,
Whose foundation is from the dust?

They are crushed before the moth;

They are beaten down from morning to evening;
They are for ever perishing without notice;
Their fluttering sound is over with them;
They die, a nothing in wisdom."

When in the early morn our youthful poet saw dimly gathered around Thebes the warriors of Ilium, he might have mourned over them in thoughts of more beautiful tenderness, had he gone for imagery to the Bible rather than to Homer; for, if a heather moralist could teach him to say, "As are the generations of leaves, so also are those of men," the son of Amoz would have told him that

"We all do fade as a leaf,

Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” And when the student-poet, "wandering in amazement," sought an interpretation of the magnificent ruins, how majestically might prophetic utterances have spoken to him of the ruin of Egypt, and of Thebes, as determined in the counsels of the Highest, and as unfolded to the rapt vision of his servants, ages before the accomplishment of the Divine decree!

Here then, reader, you may have proof that the strongest and most cultivated intellect is poor in purpose, and inferior in grace and sublimity, if it does not drink deep draughts from the founts of inspiration. "The vision and the faculty divine," are those of a Christian eye, and a Christian mind. There is nothing so great and so noble as the teaching of God's word.

But, having said so much about this particular prize poem, it will scarcely be fair to our readers, unless we give them some abridgment of it. We will take care the abridgment shall do full justice to the author.

The poet lies in slumber; but in imagination strays

through the ancient world. He stands in the halls of Carthage; now he is at Athens, amidst the shrines of Pallas and Apollo, and the gods of Greece. Then, moving with rapid wing, he alights in the Senate which gave laws to the world. Then the dreamer wanders from the seat of iron empire, to the silent Lybian desert, haunts the banks of old Nilus, sees the flashing torrent of its dark blue waters, as they harry seaward- -sees them in the beauteous turmoil of the cataract :

"Down plunging, lost in clouds of glittering spray,
That lightly fell, like lilies scattered down
From ivory fingers, or the silvery shower
When the rude North's unkindly touch shakes off
The glistening dew-drop from the rose's bloom:
Or parted here by barrier rocks, that frowned,
Like giants set in the path to stop their way,
With thousand slender streamlets girdled in
A thousand mossy isles; here broadening down
In full deep flood through tall acacia bowers,
And happy orchards set with golden fruits
Fair as the treasure, dragon-watched, that shone
In the far gardens of th' Hesperides."

Then, in the distance, the dreamer sees the frowning towers of a mighty and embattled city, rising in solitary grandeur to his view:

"And as near I came,

Precipitous walls, and clustered palaces,
And temples old in story, bathed in light,

Shone to the eye, like those rich-jewelled domes

That genii built in old Arabian tale,

Rich with the treasures of the land and sea.

The gates lay broken down; I entered in
Unheeded; all was silence, save the cry

Of some ill-omened bird, scared from his haunt
By man's unwonted step; and all the town

Lay bound in slumber; through the long blank street
No face met mine,-alone I wandered on.
But all about me, towering to the sky,
Rose lofty pinnacles, and ancient halls
Of monarchs, all forgotten; only these
Remained to tell their glory, only these

To mock the wonder of a later age.

And through tall windows, rich with coloured stones
The sunbeam poured upon the dazzled floors;
And flooded light o'er columns wreathed about
With lotus, and high-pointed obelisks traced
With mystic letters, hard to tell, as leaves
From sybil's scroll, or those dread lines of fire
That wrought confusion in Belshazzar's hall,
Writ by an unknown hand, foreshadowing woe.
And every chamber, every palace-hall,
Was dight with sculptured legendary lore ;
Or brightly glowing by the painter's art
Told stories of an early world, the youth
Of nations that had passed away, and left,
Save these, no other memory of their state."

The surrounding sculptures are eloquent of war, with all its parade and horrible details. They also picture the scenes of human life, and present its ever shifting panorama, torch-lit processions, with festal music, and guest-thronged banquets :

"And other sights were there: the Libyan gods
Stood, each in marble, figured to the life
By artist's fancy, such as life might be,
If life itself were frozen into stone.
And there were Isis, Horus, and the rest,
The dog Anubis, and the wolf-god, he
Who slew Osiris, Typhon; and the bull
Apis, to whom a myriad voices rise
And hail Osiris rendered back to life.

Nor these alone, but men whose deeds of fame
Speak to us from the past, sage, warrior, king,
Poet and statesman, names whose charm hath power
To bind the ages with a closer chain

Of brotherhood in great and glorious deeds.
But I passed on, and left the glittering halls,
And stood within the sepulchres of kings,
More wondrous than their earthly palaces.
For there they dwelt a little span of life
Brief as a dream that fades away at morn,
And passed and mingled with the silent dead:
But here, while countless ages came and went,
They lay in awful majesty, unchanged,
Nor fearing change; till the revolving years,
Completed, circled out a newer life;

And former scenes, forgotten to the sense,
Were acted o'er again; for so they deemed,
What was, had been, and was again to be,
In due succession, different, yet the same."

But the poet finds it necessary to enlarge the very simple machinery which has hitherto sufficed for the working of his poem. He needs a living voice as an interpreter of these hieroglyphics of the chambers which are solemn and silent as death. He penetrates a dim inner recess. There, amidst gloomy draperies, and sad as if sorrowfully tending some dying couch, in this inner chamber

"A lonely woman sat; a single lamp

Burned on before her, like a little star

Scarce seen through drifting clouds when all the night
Is black with tempest; and its light was dim,
Cold, cheerless, as in Iceland's winter falls
One straggling sunbeam o'er a waste of snow.
Her face was beautiful, but pale and sad
With untold grief; her long dark careless hair
Had slipped its band, and strayed in tangled folds
Down her cold bosom; and her eye was dim;
But heaved her breast as though a Hecla fire
Were cratered there, and forced its way unbid
In sudden storms of sighs; most beautiful,
Most sad, she sat; but oh, if Sorrow stole
A charm awhile from Beauty, Beauty's self
Might envy well the charm that Sorrow lent
To every perfect feature; there awhile

I stood in silence, loth too soon to wake
Her reverie."

Some readers may call this too familiar; savouring too much of warm, living humanity, to harmonize with sepulchral ruins, where bygone ages are entombed. But, he is dreaming, this Oxford poet, in the Sheldonian Theatre, be it remembered; and he recites to a vast throng of the youth and beauty of England. Pardon his anachronism of feeling, and listen with him to this lonely woman as she questions the daring young wanderer, who has broken in upon her mysterious seclusion::

"At last she spoke, her voice
Sank deep and mournful on my listening ear,
As moans the sad sea-wind the long night through
About the desert, unfrequented shore.

And who art thou,' she said, 'whose careless step
Hath thus disturbed us in our place of rest,
Our long last home, where ages flow untold

In sad succession, like a funeral train

That knows no end; and never breaks the morn,
But morn and eve are lost in ceaseless night ?
Then I in wonder, 'Not with curious eye

Led on by idle fancy have I come,

But wandering in amazement, from among
The lordly mansions of an early time,

When dwelt the gods on earth, and raised them up
Eternal houses, splendid as the crest

Of white Olympus when his topmost snows
Reflect the Thunderer's presence, and the state
Of heaven descends, to awe the eyes of men.'
'Poor relics these,' she said, 'but I have seen
The hundred-gated Theba, when in youth
She sat aloft in queenly state, as sits

The cloud-capped rock above a waste of sea.
A wondrous city; and a wondrous land,
Such as no eye can e'er again behold."

This lonely woman-how fortunate that he should find her in the "dim inner chamber!"-calls up visions from the past, and describes the night and morning of this wondrous city, bidding its crowded streets and active life rise at her summons:—

"I turned me at her bidding, and beheld
A countless people, toiling on till eve,
All with a single purpose, piling up

Huge granite rocks, and moulding into form
With curious art the uncouth mass of stone;
And while they laboured, rose, as in a dream,
Deep-bastioned walls, and turrets high to heaven,
And spacious courts, and palaces, and shrines
Of jewelled fretwork, deep inlaid with gold:
And one was there who urged them on to toil,
And sang the glories of the coming age,
And Thebes, the queen of nations; and I knew
The guardian goddess of the town, and knew
The strange sad lady whom I erst had found
In lonely sorrow, weeping in the tombs."

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