The horrible color-the color of flame! 'Tis a romance to them --a wonder I know that the great All-Father UNREQUITING. The hot sun has o'erflowed from his I CANNOT love thee, but I hold thee broken urn— dear Let me imagine that thou art my friend No less- -no more I ask for here below! Be patient with me even to the endLoving me still, thou wilt not tell me so! "Thou wert not, Solomon! in all thy | When the Memnonium was in all its How vain your grandeur! Ah, how Those temples, palaces, and piles transitory stupendous, Then say what secret melody was hidden In Memnon's statue, which at sunPerhaps thou wert a priest—if so, rise played; Are vain, for priestcraft never owns my struggles its juggles. Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat, Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass; AND thou hast walked about, (how Or dropped a half-penny in Homer's In Thebes's streets three thousand strange a story!) years ago, Or held, by Solomon's own invitation, A torch at the great Temple's dedication. I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed, Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled; For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed, Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled; Antiquity appears to have begun Long after thy primeval race was run. Thou could'st develop - if that withered tongue Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen How the world looked when it was fresh and young, And the great Deluge still had left it green; [pages Or was it then so old that history's Contained no record of its early ages? The nature of thy private life unfold: heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast, And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled; Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face; What was thy name and station, age and race? |