Page:Landon in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1835.pdf/15

Rh

Rh

Her wealth—our gold is one poor miser's store, Her pomp was as the night, With glittering myriads bright, Her palace floors with gems were covered o'er.

Her summer's prodigality of hues, Trees like eternal shrines, Where the rich creeper twines, And all lit up with morn's most golden dews.

'Tis a past age—the conqueror's banner furled, Droops o'er the falling tower; Yet was the East's first hour The great ideal of the material world.

The beautiful—the fertile and the great, The terrible—and wild, Were round the first-born child Of the young hour of earth's imperial state

And yet the mind's high tones were wanting there, The carved and broken stone Tells glories overthrown; Religions, empires, palaces are—where?

Such annals have the tempest's fire and gloom; They tell of desperate power, Famine and battle's hour, War, want, disorder, slavery, and the tomb.

Not such the history that half redeems The meanness of our clay; That intellectual sway Which works the excellence of which it dreams.

Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground; Not in your sculptured rise Is the real exercise Of human nature's highest power found.

'Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil, 'Tis in the gifted line, In each far thought divine, That brings down heaven to light our common soil.

'Tis in the great, the lovely, and the true, 'Tis in the generous thought, Of all that man has wrought, Of all that yet remains for man to do.