Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/143

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Destruction joys, amid those scenes,

To watch the sport of Fate, While Time between the pillars leans,

And bows them with his weight.

But towers and temples crush'd by Time,

Stupendous wrecks ! appear To me less mournfully sublime

Than the poor Mole-hill here.

Through all this hillock's crumbling mould Once the warm life-blood ran ;

— Here thine original behold, And here thy ruins, Man !

Methinks this dust yet heaves with breath ;

Ten thousand pulses beat ; Tell me, — in this small hill of death,

How many mortals meet ?

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