RAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 419 



With fire and sword thy walks were swept ; 

 Exploded mines thy streets had heaped 

 In hills of rubbish ; they had been 

 Traversed by gabion and fascine, 

 With cannon lowering in the rear 

 In dark array, a deadly tier, 

 Whose thunder-clouds, with fiery breath, 

 Sent far around their iron death. 

 The bursting shell, in fragments flung 

 Athwart the skies, at midnight sung, 

 Or, on its airy pathway sent, 

 Its meteors swept the firmament. 

 Thy castle, towering o'er the shore, 

 Keeled on its rock amidst the roar 

 Of thousand thunders, for it stood 

 In circle of a fiery flood ; 

 And crumbling masses fiercely sent 

 From its high frowning battlement, 

 Smote by the shot and whistling shell, 

 With groan and crash in ruin fell. 



Through desert streets the mourner passed, 

 Midst walls that spectral shadows cast, 

 Like some fair spirit wailing o'er 

 The faded scenes it loved of yore ; 

 No human voice was heard to bless 

 That place of waste and loneliness. 



I saw at eve the night-bird fly, 

 And vulture dimly flitting by, 

 To revel o'er each morsel stolen 

 From the cold corse, all black and swoln, 

 That on the shattered ramparts lay, 

 Of him who perished yesterday, 

 Of him whose pestilential steam 

 Rose reeking on the morning beam, 

 Whose fearful fragments, nearly gone, 

 Were blackening from the bleaching bone. 



The house-dog bounded o'er each scene 

 Where cisterns had so lately been : 

 Away in frantic haste he sprung, 

 And sought to cool his burning tongue. 

 He howled, and to his famished cry 

 The dreary echoes gave reply ; 

 And owlet's dirge, through shadows dim, 

 Rolled back in sad response to him." 



