Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/103



traveller sat upon a stone, A broken column's pride, And o'er his head a fig-tree waved Its grateful umbrage wide, While round him fruitful valleys smiled, And crystal streams ran by, And the bold mountain's forehead hoar Rose up 'tween earth and sky.

But on a ruin'd pile he gazed, Beneath whose mouldering gloom The roving fox a shelter found, And noisome bats a tomb. "Ho, Arab!" for a ploughman wrought The grassy sward among, With marble fragments richly strew'd,   And terraced olives hung,

"Say, canst thou tell what ancient dome   In darkness here declines, And strangely lifts its spectral form    Among the matted vines?" He stay'd his simple plough, that traced Its crooked furrow nigh, And, while his oxen cropp'd the turf, Look'd up with vacant eye.