Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/790

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Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; What now remains ? — the memory Of senselessness and shame — What is immortal there ? 115 Nothing — it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning : soon Oblivion will steal silently The remnant of its fame. 120 Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — The earthquakes of the human race ; Like them, forgotten when the ruin That marks their shock is past. ' Beside the eternal Nile, 126 The Pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way : Those Pyramids shall fall ; Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell The spot whereon they stood ! 1 3 1 Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder's name ! ' Behold yon sterile spot ; Where now the wandering Arab's tent 135 Flaps in the desert-blast. There once old Salem's haughty fane Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory. 1 40 Oh ! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane ; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, 144 And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God ; 1 50 They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child, — old age and infancy Promiscuous perished ; their vic- torious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were fiends : But what was he who taught them that the God 155 Of nature and benevolence hath given A special sanction to the trade of blood ? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which im- posture Recites till terror credits, are pursu- ing 160 Itself into forgetfulness. ' Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desert now : The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, 1 65 Contrasted with those ancient fanes, Now crumbling to oblivion ; The long and lonely colonnades, Through which the ghost of Free- dom stalks, Seem like a well-known tune, Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, 171 Remembered now in sadness. But, oh ! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast Of human nature there ! 175 Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around — Then, shuddering, meets his own. Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowled and hypocritical monk 1 80 Prays, curses and deceives. Spirit, ten thousand years Have scarcely passed away, Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's I sons, 185