Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Lit by the wan light of the hornèd moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones! But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades— These mouldering plinths-these sad and blackened shaftsThese vague entablatures--this crumbling frieze— These shattered cornices-this wreck-this ruin— These stones—alas! these grey stones-are they all All of the famed and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? "Not all "--the Echoes answer me--" not all! Not all the mysteries that in us lie- ΤΟ OT long ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained "the power of words"-denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue : ΤΟ And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Italian tones, made only to be murmured That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,” Than even the seraph harper, Israfel, (Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,”) I cannot write--I cannot speak or think Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling, To where the prospect terminates-thee only. |