Age after age has rolled away,

Altars and thrones have felt decay,

Sages and saints have risen ;

And, like a giant roused from sleep,

Man has explored the pathless deep,

And lightnings snatched from heaven.

And many a shrine in dust is laid,

Where kneeling nations homage paid,

By rock, or fount, or grove:

Ephesian Dian sees no more

Her workmen fuse the silver ore,

Nor Capitolian Jove.

E'en Salem's hallowed courts have ceased

With solemn pomps her tribes to feast,

No more the victim bleeds;

To censers filled with rare perfumes,
And vestments from Egyptian looms,

A purer rite succeeds.

Yet still, where'er presumptuous man

His Maker's essence strives to scan,

And lifts his feeble hands,

Though saint and sage their powers unite, To fathom that abyss of light,

Ah! still that altar stands.

Its round of seasons, has fulfilled its course,

Absolved its destined period, and is borne,

Silent and swift, to that devouring gulf,
Their womb and grave, where seasons,

Revolving periods of uncounted time,

months and years,

All merge, and are forgotten.-Thou alone,

In thy deep bosom burying all the past,

Still art; and still from thine exhaustless store

New periods spring, Eternity.-Thy name

Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being, Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st

All sense, all reasoning,-thou, who never wast

Less than thyself, and who still art thyself

Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken Equals thy present store-No line can reach

To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage

Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars,

And measure distant worlds, is here a child,
And, humbled, drops his calculating pen.

On and still onward flows the ceaseless tide,

And wrecks of empires and of worlds are borne

Like atoms on its bosom.-Still thou art

And he who does inhabit thee.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND ELEVEN.

STILL the loud death drum, thundering from afar,
O'er the vext nations pours the storm of war:

To the stern call still Britain bends her ear,
Feeds the fierce strife, the' alternate hope and fear;
Bravely, though vainly, dares to strive with Fate,
And seeks by turns to prop each sinking state.
Colossal power with overwhelming force

Bears down each fort of Freedom in its course;
Prostrate she lies beneath the Despot's sway,
While the hushed nations curse him—and obey.

Bounteous in vain, with frantic man at strife,

Glad Nature pours the means-the joys of life;