Page:Hemans Miscellaneous Poetry 2.pdf/9



the peopled and the regal isle, Whose vales, rejoicing in their beauty, smile; Whose cities, fearless of the spoiler, tower, And send on every breeze a voice of power; Hath Desolation rear'd herself a throne, And mark'd a pathless region for her own? Yes! though thy turf no stain of carnage wore When bled the noble hearts of many a shore; Though not a hostile step thy heath-flowers bent When empires totter'd, and the earth was rent; Yet lone, as if some trampler of mankind Had still'd life's busy murmurs on the wind, And, flush'd with power in daring pride's excess, Stamp'd on thy soil the curse of barrenness; For thee in vain descend the dews of heaven, In vain the sunbeam and the shower are given, Wild Dartmoor! thou that, midst thy mountains rude, Hast robed thyself with haughty solitude, At a dark cloud on summer's clear blue sky, A mourner, circled with festivity! For all beyond is life!—the rolling sea, The rush, the swell, whose echoes reach not thee. Yet who shall find a scene so wild and bare But man has left his lingering traces there? E'en on mysterious Afric's boundless plains, Where noon with attributes of midnight reigns, In gloom and silence fearfully profound, As of a world unwaked to soul or sound. Though the sad wanderer of the burning zone Feels, as amidst infinity, alone, And naught of life be near, his camel's tread Is o'er the prostrate cities of the dead! Some column, rear'd by long-forgotten hands, Just lifts its head above the billowy sands— Some mouldering shrine still consecrates the scene, And tells that glory's footstep there hath been. There hath the spirit of the mighty pass'd, Not without record; though the desert blast, Borne on the wings of Time, hath swept away The proud creations rear'd to brave decay. But thou, lone region! whose unnoticed name No lofty deeds have mingled with their fame, Who shall unfold thine annals?—who shall tell If on thy soil the sons of heroes fell, In those far ages which have left no trace, No sunbeam, on the pathway of their race? Though, haply, in the unrecorded days Of kings and chiefs who pass'd without their praise, Thou mightst have rear'd the valiant and the free, In history's page there is no tale of thee.

Yet hast thou thy memorials. On the wild, Still rise the cairns, of yore all rudely piled,