TIME. 35 



And their wild harps, suspended o'er their graves, 

 Sigh to the desert winds a dying strain. 



Meanwhile the arts, in second infancy, 



Rise in some distant clirae, and then perchance 



Some bold adventurer, filled with golden dreams, 



Steering his bark through trackless solitudes, 



Where, to his wandering thoughts, no daring prow 



Hath ever ploughed before, — espies the clitt's 



Of fallen Albion. — To the land unknown 



He journeys joyful ; and perhaps descries 



Some vestige of her ancient stattliness ; 



Then he, with vain conjecture, fills his mind 



Of the unheard-of race, which had arrived 



At science in that solitary nook, 



Far from the civil world : and sagely sigbs 



And moralizes on the state of man. 



Still on its march, unnoticed and unfelt. 



Moves on our being. We do live and breathe, 



And we are gone. The spoiler heeds us not. 



W^e have our spring-time and our rottenness ; 



And as we fall, another race succeeds 



To perish likewise. — Meanwhile nature smiles — 



The seasons run their round — the sun fulfils 



His annual course — and heaven and earth remain 



Still changing, yet unchanged — still doom'd to feel 



Endless mutation in perpetual rest. 



W^here are conceaFd the days which have elapsed ? 



Hid in the mighty cavern of the past, 



They rise upon us only to appal. 



By indistinct and half- glimpsed images, 



Misty, gigantic, huge, obscure, remote. 



Oh, it is fearful, on the midnight couch, 



When the rude rushing winds forget to rave. 



And the pale moon, that through the casement high 



Surveys the sleepless muser, stamps the hour 



Of utter silence, it is fearful then 



To steer the mind, in deadly solitude, 



