For this earth is old, And its heart is cold, And the palsy of age has bound it; And my spirit frets For the viewless nets Which are hourly clinging round it.
And with joyful glee We have heard of thee, Thou Isle in mid ocean sleeping; And thy records old, Which the Sage has told, How the Memphian tombs are keeping.
But we know not where, ’Neath the desert air, To look for the pleasant places Of the youth of Time, Whose austerer prime The haunts of his childhood effaces.
Like the golden flowers Of the western bowers, Have waned their immortal shadows; And no harp may tell Where the asphodel Clad in light those Elysian meadows.
And thou, fairest Isle In the daylight’s smile, Hast thou sunk in the boiling ocean, While beyond thy strand Rose a mightier land From the wave in alternate motion?
Are the isles that stud The Atlantic flood, But the peaks of thy tallest mountains, While repose below The great water’s flow Thy towns and thy towers and fountains?
Have the Ocean powers Made their quiet bowers, In thy fanes and thy dim recesses? Or in haunts of thine Do the sea-maids twine Coral wreaths for their dewy tresses?
Or does foot not fall In deserted hall, Choked with wrecks that ne’er won their haven, By the ebb trailed o’er Thy untrampled floor, Which their sunken wealth has paven?
Oh, appear! appear! Not as when thy spear Ruled as far as the broad Egean, But in Love’s own might, And in Freedom’s right, Till the nations uplift their Pæan,
Who now watch and weep, And their vigil keep, Till they faint for expectation; Till their dim eyes shape Temple tower and cape From the cloud and the exhalation.
An awful statue, by a veil half-hid, At Sais stands. One came, to whom was known All lore committed to Etruscan stone, And all sweet voices, that dull time has chid To silence now, by antique Pyramid, Skirting the desert, heard; and what the deep May in its dimly-lighted chambers keep, Where Genii groan beneath the seal-bound lid. He dared to raise that yet unlifted veil With hands not pure, but never might unfold What there he saw--madness, the shadow, fell On his few days, ere yet he went to dwell With night’s eternal people, and his tale Has thus remained, and will remain, untold.