PALMYRA. 



EVENING, soft hour, with whom on sportive wing 

 To other skies the mind delights to spring, 

 To muse o'er ancient grandeur's ruin d seats, 

 Rome's marble wastes, or Psestum's calm retreats; 

 Hast thou no charm to lure the wanderer's flight, 

 To Syria's vales, and Adah's storied height, 

 Where throned amidst the desart's barren sands, 

 In lifeless majesty Palmyra stands ? 

 Slow sinks the sun but on that mighty hill 

 Its last and loveliest rays are lingering still ; 

 Still do its levell'd beams, with fainter glow, 

 Dwell on Palmyra's giant wrecks below, 

 And gild the mountain castles' airy nest, 

 And fane, that holds the Arab for its guest ; 

 And ruin'd fountain, by whose scanty spring 

 The weary vulture droops her blood-stained wing, 

 And headless statue from its column rent, 

 And banquet hall, and regal monument. 



'Tis past but midst a thousand glorious dyes, 

 God of the Sun, thy towers of beauty rise ; 

 Around thy courts the purple splendours fall, 

 Where light pilasters rear the marble wall ; 

 There stands, retiring into distant shade, 

 In golden pomp, the stately colonnade, 

 High o'er whose shafts th' acanthus chaplets bloom, 

 Like young Affection bent o'er Beauty's tomb. 



Proud seat for Syria's deity sublime 



The high arch'd portal fronts the western clime, 



There o'er his favour'd shrines, in polish'd stone, 



The emblem'd god has fixed his mystic throne. 



Around, secure beneath his shadowy wings, 



In sculptured pride the vine's wild tendril clings, 



Twines round the lordly front in graceful wreaths, 



Lives without life, in breathless marble breathes. 



That gorgeous glow has past in calm repose 

 O'er the tall pile the shades of evening close, 

 Yet still half seen, half melting into gloom, 

 High towers the fritted wall, and vaulted doom 

 A- moment o'er Palmyra's wide domain 

 Silence and darkness hold divided reign. 



Yet round the scene of grandeur and decay, 



The pale enthusiast, Memory, loves to stray ; 



Recalls the glories of her faded sphere, 



The marble wall the genii toiled to rear, 



The palms that crown'd yon barren hill with shade, 



The crystal fountains 'midst those groves that play'd, 



The gold that glitter'd on her crowded mart, 



Rome's baffled might, and Parthia's broken dart : 



Frail charms vain wealth brief triumphs powerful spell- 



Zenobia yielded, and Palmyra fell. 



