spread below,So smilingly beguile those starting tears;
Something, the feelings of the human heart —
Something, the scene itself, and something more —
A wish to gratify one generous mind —
May plead for pardon.
To this spot I came
To view the dark memorials of a world4
Perished at the Almighty's voice, and swept
With all its noise away! Since then, unmarked,
In that rude cave those dark memorials lay,
And told no tale!
Spirit of other times,
Sad shadow of the ancient world, come forth!
Thou who has slept four thousand years, awake!
Rise from the cavern's last recess, and say,
What giant cleft in twain the neighbouring rocks,5
Then slept for ages in vast Ogo's Cave,6
And left them rent and frowning from that hour;
Say, rather, when the stern Archangel stood,
Above the tossing of the flood, what arm
Shattered this mountain, and its hollow chasm
Heaped with the mute memorials of that doom!
Spirit of other times, thou speakest not!
Yet who could gaze a moment on that wreck
Of desolation, but must pause to think
Of the mutations of the globe – of time,
Hurrying to onward spoil – of his own life,
Swift passing, as the summer light, away —
Of Him who spoke, and the dread storm went forth.
The surge came, and the surge went back, and there —
There – when the black abyss had ceased to roar,
And waters, shrinking from the rocks and hills,
Slept in the solitary sunshine – there
The bones that strew the inmost cavern lay:
And when forgotten centuries had passed,
And the gray smoke went up from villages,
And cities, with their towers and temples, shone,
And kingdoms rose and perished – there they lay!
The crow sailed o'er the spot; the villager
Plodded to morning toil, yet undisturbed
They lay: – when, lo! as if but yesterday
The Archangel's trump had thundered o'er the deep
The mighty shade of ages that are passed
Towers into light! Say, Christian, is it true,
That dim recess, that cavern, heaped with bones,
Will echo to thy Bible!
But a while
Here let me stand, and gaze upon the scene;
That headland, and those winding sands, and mark
The morning sunshine, on that very shore
Where once a child I wandered. Oh! return,
(I sigh) return a moment, days of youth,
Of childhood, – oh, return! How vain the thought,
Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,
Unblamed, may dally with imaginings;
For this wide view is like the scene of life,
Once traversed o'er with carelessness and glee,
And we look back upon the vale of years,
And hear remembered voices, and behold,
In blended colours, images and shades
Long passed, now rising, as at Memory's call,
Again in softer light.
I see thee not,
Home of my infancy – I see thee not,
Thou fane that standest on the hill alone,7
The homeward sailor's sea-mark; but I view
Brean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands,
Weston; and, far away, one wandering ship,
Where stretches into mist the Severn sea.
There, mingled with the clouds, old Cambria draws
Its stealing line of mountains, lost in haze;
There, in mid-channel, sit the sister holms,8
Secure and tranquil, though the tide's vast sweep,
As it rides by, might almost seem to rive
The deep foundations of the earth again,
Threatening, as once, resistless, to ascend
In tempest to this height, to bury here
Fresh-weltering carcases!
But, lo, the Cave!
Descend the steps, cut rudely in the rock,
Cautious. The yawning vault is at our feet!
Long caverns, winding within caverns, spread
On either side their labyrinths; all dark,
Save where the light falls glimmering on huge bones,
In mingled multitudes. Ere yet we ask
Whose bones, and of what animals they formed
The structure, when no human voice was heard
In all this isle; look upward to the roof
That silent drips, and has for ages dripped,
From which, like icicles, the stalactites
Depend: then ask of the geologist,
How nature, vaulting the rude chamber, scooped
Its vast recesses; he with learning vast
Will talk of limestone rock, of stalactites,
And oolites, and hornblende, and graywacke —
With sounds almost as craggy as the rock
Of which he speaks – feldspar, and gneis, and schorl!
But let us learn of this same troglodyte,9
Who guides us through the winding labyrinth,
The erudite "Professor" of the cave,
Not of the college; stagyrite of bones.
He leads, with flickering candle, through the heaps
Himself has piled, and placed in various forms,
Grotesque arrangement, while the cave itself
Seems but his element of breathing! Look!
This humereus is that of the wild ox.
The very candle, as with sympathy,
Flares while he speaks, in glimmering wonderment!
But who can mark these visible remains,
Nor pause to think how awful, and how true,
The dread event they speak! What monuments
Hath man, since then, the lord, the emmet, raised
On earth! He hath built pyramids, and said,
Stand there! and
The reader is referred to Dr Buckland's most interesting illustrations of these remains of a former world. The Bishop of Bath and Wells has built a picturesque and appropriate cottage near the cave, on the hill commanding this fine view.
The stupendous Cheddar Cliffs, in the neighbourhood.
Wookey,
Uphill church.
Flat and Steep Holms.
Mr Beard, of Banwell, called familiarly "the Professor," but in reality the guide.
