they stood,Whilst, like the camel's shadow on the sands
Beneath them years and ages passed. He said,
My name shall never die! and like the God
Of silence,10 with his finger on his lip,
Oblivion mocked, then pointed to a tomb,
'Mid vast and winding vaults, without a name.
Where art thou, Thebes? The chambers of the dead
Echo, Behold! and twice ten thousand men,
Even in their march of rapine and of blood,
Involuntary halted,11 at the sight
Of thy majestic wreck, for many, a league —
Sphynxes, colossal fanes, and obelisks —
Pale in the morning sun! Ambition sighed
A moment, and passed on. In this rude isle,
The Druid altars frowned; and still they stand,
As silent as the barrows at their feet,
Yet tell the same stern tale. Soldier of Rome,
Art thou come hither to this land remote
Hid in the ocean-waste? Thy chariot wheels
Rung on that road below!12– Cohorts, and turms,
With their centurions, in long file appear,
Their golden eagles glittering to the sun,
O'er the last line of spears; and standard-flags
Wave, and the trumpets sounding to advance,
And shields, and helms, and crests, and chariots, mark
The glorious march of Cæsar's soldiery,
Firing the gray horizon! They are passed!
And, like a gleam of glory, perishing,
Leave but a name behind! So passes man,
An armed spectre o'er a field of blood,
And vanishes; and other armed shades
Pass by, red battle hurtling as they pass.
The Saxon kings have strewed their palaces
From Thames to Tyne. But, lo! the sceptre shakes;
The Dane, remorseless as the hurricane
That sweeps his native cliffs, harries the land!
What terror strode before his track of blood!
What hamlets mourned his desultory march,
When on the circling hills, along the sea,
The beacon-flame shone nightly! He has passed!
Now frowns the Norman victor on his throne,
And every cottage shrouds its lonely fire,
As the sad curfew sounds. Yet Piety,
With new-inspiring energies, awoke,
And ampler polity: in woody vales,
In unfrequented wilds, and forest-glens,
The towers of the sequestered abbey shone,
As when the pinnacles of Glaston-Fane
First met the morning light. The parish church,
Then too, exulting o'er the ruder cross,
Upsprung, till soon the distant village peal
Flings out its music, where the tapering spire
Adds a new picture to the sheltered vale.
Uphill, thy rock, where sits the lonely church,
Above the sands, seems like the chronicler
Of other times, there left to tell the tale!
But issuing from the cave, look round, behold
How proudly the majestic Severn rides
On to the sea; how gloriously in light
It rides! Along this solitary ridge,
Where smiles, but rare, the blue campanula,
Among the thistles and gray stones that peep
Through the thin herbage, to the highest point
Of elevation, o'er the vale below,
Slow let us climb. First look upon that flower,
The lowly heath-bell, smiling at our feet.
How beautiful it smiles alone! The Power
That bade the great sea roar, that spread the heavens,
That called the sun from darkness, decked that flower,
And bade it grace this bleak and barren hill.
Imagination, in her playful mood,
Might liken it to a poor village maid,
Lowly, but smiling in her lowliness,
And dressed so neatly as if every day
Were Sunday. And some melancholy bard
Might, idly musing, thus discourse to it: —
Daughter of Summer, who dost linger here,
Decking the thistly turf, and arid hill,
Unseen, let the majestic dahlia
Glitter, an empress, in her blazonry
Of beauty; let the stately lily shine,
As snow-white as the breast of the proud swan
Sailing upon the blue lake silently,
That lifts her tall neck higher as she views
Her shadow in the stream! Such ladies bright
May reign unrivalled in their proud parterres!
Thou wouldst not live with them; but if a voice,
Fancy, in shaping mood, might give to thee,
To the forsaken primrose thou wouldst say —
Come, live with me, and we two will rejoice:
Nor want I company; for when the sea
Shines in the silent moonlight, elves and fays,
Gentle and delicate as Ariel,
That do their spiritings on these wild holts,
Circle me in their dance, and sing such songs
As human ear ne'er heard! But cease the strain,
Lest wisdom and severer truth should chide.
Behind that windmill, sailing round and round,
Like days on days revolving, Bleadon lies,
Where first I pondered on the grammar-lore,
Sad as the spelling-book, beneath the roof
Of its secluded parsonage; Brean Down
Emerges o'er the edge of Hutton Hill,
Just seen in paler light! And Weston there,
Where I remember a few cottages
Sprinkling the sand, uplifts its tower, and shines,
As if in conscious beauty, o'er the scene.
And I have seen a far more welcome sight,
The living line of population stream —
Children, and village maids, and gray old men —
Stream o'er the sands to church: such change has been
In the brief compass of one hastening life!
And yet that hill, the light, is to my eyes
Familiar as those sister isles that sit
In the mid channel! Look, how calm they sit,
As
Egyptian god of silence.
Halt of the French army at the sight of the ruins.
The Roman way passes immediately under Banwell.
