Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away
The ponderous rock that sealed the sacred tomb; Then did the slowly penetrating ray
Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom,
And lowered torches flashed against thy side,
As Asia's king thy blazoned trophies eyed.
Plucked from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt,
The features of the royal corse they scanned ;
Dashing the diadem from his temple gaunt,
They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand;
And on those fields, where once his will was law,
Left him for winds to waste and beasts to gnaw.
Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past,
Upclosed the sepulchre with cunning skill,
And nature, aiding their devotion, cast
Over its entrance a concealing rill ;
Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep/
Twenty-three centuries in silence deep..
But he from whom nor pyramids nor sphynx
Can hide its secrecies, Belzoni came;
From the tomb's mouth unloosed the granite links,
Gave thee again to light, and life, and fame,
And brought thee from the sands and deserts forth,
To charm the pallid children of the North!
Thou art in London, which, when thou wert new,
Was what Thebes is, a wilderness and waste,
Where savage beasts more savage men pursue;
A scene by nature cursed,-by man disgraced.
Now 'tis the world's metropolis !-The high
Queen of arms, learning, arts and luxury!
Here, where I hold my hand, 'tis strange to think
What other hands, perchance, preceded mine;
Others have also stood beside thy brink,
And vainly conned the moralizing line!
Kings, sages, chiefs, that touched this stone, like me, Where are ye now ?-Where all must shortly be.
All is mutation ;—he within this stone
Was once the greatest monarch of the hour.
His bones are dust-his very name unknown!—
Go, learn from him the vanity of power;
Seek not the frame's corruption to control,
But build a lasting mansion for thy soul.
New Monthly Magazine.
THOU desolate and dying year!
Emblem of transitory man,
Whose wearisome and wild career,
Like thine, is bounded to a span ;
It seems but as a little day
Since nature smiled upon thy birth,
And spring came forth in fair array,
To dance upon the joyous earth.
Sad alteration!-Now how lone,
How verdureless is nature's breast;
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In autumn's yellow vesture drest:
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day-
The summer flowers she loved to greet-
The bird-the flowers-oh where are they?
Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness,
As beauty stretched upon the bier
In death's clay-cold and dark caress;
There's loveliness in thy decay,
Which breathes, which lingers round thee still,
Like memory's mild and cheering ray
Beaming upon the night of ill.
Yet-yet the radiance is not gone
Which shed a richness o'er the scene,
Which smiled upon the golden dawn
When skies were brilliant and serene-
Oh! still a melancholy smile
Gleams upon nature's aspect fair,
To charm the eye a little while,
Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!
Thou desolate and dying year!
Since Time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear,
And knelt beside the bed of death:
How many hearts, that lightly sprung
When joy was blooming but to die,
Their finest chords by death unstrung,
Have yielded life's expiring sigh.
And pillowed low beneath the clay,
Have ceased to melt-to breathe-to burn,
The proud, the gentle, and the gay,
Gathered unto the mouldering urn!
Whilst freshly flowed the frequent tear
For love bereft-affection fled-
For all that were our blessings here,
The loved the lost-the sainted dead!
Thou desolate and dying year!
The musing spirit finds in thee
Lessons impressive and severe
Of deep and stern morality!—
Thou teachest how the germ of youth,
Which blooms in being's dawning day,
Planted by Nature-reared by Truth-
Withers like thee in dark decay.
Promise of youth! Fair as the form
Of heaven's benign and golden bow,
Thy smiling arch begirds the storm,
And sheds a light on every wo:
Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue,
A tone of melody is given,
As if her magic voice were strung
With the empyreal fire from heaven;
And love, which never can expire,
Whose origin is from on high,
Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire
From the pure fountains of the sky-
That ray, which glows and brightens still
Unchanged eternal, and divine-
Where seraphs own its holy thrill,
And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year,
Prophetic of our final fall!
Thy buds are gone,-thy leaves are sere,
Thy beauties shrouded in the pall;
And all the garniture that shed
A brilliancy upon thy prime,
Hath, like a morning vision, fled
To the expanded grave of Time.
Time! Time! In thy triumphal flight
How all life's phantoms fleet away!
The smile of Hope-and young Delight
Fame's meteor beam-and Fancy's ray;
They fade-and on thy heaving tide,
Rolling its stormy waves afar,
Are borne the wrecks of human pride,
The broken wrecks of Fortune's war.
There, in disorder dark and wild,
Are seen the fabrics once so high,
Which mortal vanity had piled
As emblems of Eternity!
And deemed the stately domes, whose forms Frowned in their majesty sublime,
Would stand unshaken by the storms That gathered round the brow of Time.
Thou desolate and dying year!
Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine;
Like evening shadows disappear,
And leave the spirit to repine.
The stream of life, that used to pour
Its fresh and sparkling waters on-
While Fate stood watching on the shore
And numbered all the moments gone-
Where hath the morning splendour flown
Which danced upon that crystal stream?
Where are the joys to childhood known,
When life is an enchanted dream?
Enveloped in the starless night
Which destiny hath overspread
Enrolled upon that trackless flight,
Where the dark wing of Time had sped.
Oh! thus hath life its even tide
Of sorrow, loneliness and grief;
And thus, divested of its pride,
It withers like the yellow leaf!
Oh! such is life's autumnal bower,
When plundered of its summer bloom!
And such is life's autumnal hour,
Which heralds man unto the tomb.
New-York Advertiser.
THEY took their way (Vathek and his young bride,
The sweet Nouronihar) through summer fields
Of flowers-by sparkling rivers-fountains that
Splash'd o'er the turf-by palm and tamarisk trees-
* Vide Beckford's History of the Caliph Vathek.
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