And pearly battlements around Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

The magic car no longer moved.
The Fairy and the Spirit
Entered the Hall of Spells:

Those golden clouds
That rolled in glittering billows
Beneath the azure canopy
With the ethereal footsteps trembled

not:

The light and crimson mists, Floating to strains of thrilling melody Through that unearthly dwelling,

Yielded to every movement of the will.

Eternal nature's law.

Above, below, around The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony; Each with undeviating aim, In eloquent silence, through the depths of space

Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light

That twinkled in the misty distance:
None but a spirit's eye

Might ken that rolling orb;
None but a spirit's eye,

And in no other place

Each action of this earth's inhabitants. But matter, space and time

In those aërial mansions cease to act; And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps

The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul

Fears to attempt the conquest.

The Fairy pointed to the earth. The Spirit's intellectual eye Its kindred beings recognised. The thronging thousands, to a passing view,

Seemed like an anthill's citizens.
How wonderful! that even
The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest being, the weak
touch

That moves the finest nerve,
And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link

In the great chain of nature.

Behold, the Fairy cried,
Palmyra's ruined palaces!--

Behold! where grandeur frowned;
Behold! where pleasure smiled;
What now remains?— the memory
Of senselessness and shame-
What is immortal there?
Nothing-it stands to tell

A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently

The remnant of its fame. Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trod— The earthquakes of the human race; Like them, forgotten when the ruin

That marks their shock is past. Beside the eternal Nile, The Pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way: Those pyramids shall fall; Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell The spot whereon they stood! Their very site shall be forgotten,

As is their builder's name!

Behold yon sterile spot;

Of nature and benevolence hath given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the
tales

Of this barbarian nation, which impos

ture

Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
Itself into forgetfulness.
Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta
stood,

There is a moral desert now:
The mean and miserable huts,
The yet more wretched palaces,
Contrasted with those ancient fanes,
Now crumbling to oblivion;

The long and lonely colonnades,
Through which the ghost of Freedom
stalks,

Seem like a well-known tune,

Flaps in the desert-blast.

There once old Salem's haughty fane Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,

And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory. Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed

The building of that fane; and many a father,

Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,

And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life,

To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their DemonGod;

They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb

The unborn child,—old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious

arms

Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:

But what was he who taught them that the God

loved to hear,

Remembered now in sadness. But, oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast Of human nature there! Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around

Then, shuddering, meets his

own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowled and hypocritical monk
Prays, curses and deceives.

Spirit! ten thousand years
Have scarcely passed away,
Since, in the waste where now the
savage drinks

His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's

sons,

Wakes the unholy song of war,

Arose a stately city,

Metropolis of the western continent :

There, now, the mossy column-stone, Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,

Which once appeared to brave All, save its country's ruin; There the wide forest scene, Rude in the uncultivated loveliness

fool

Whom courtiers nickname monarch,

whilst a slave

Even to the basest appetites-that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he

smiles

At the deep curses which the destitute Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

Awful

sands groan

death,

The drones of the community; they feed

They prey like scorpions on the springs

of life.

frame

To punish those who err: earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sufficing nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,--she only
knows

How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.

Is it strange That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?

Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange

That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,

Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds

Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,

His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man's mild nature rises not in war
Against a king's employ? No-'tis

not strange.

powers

Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,

To those who know not nature, nor deduce

The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes

reason's voice,

Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked

The nations; and mankind perceive that vice

Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happiness and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare

tial bed

ity

Those gilded flies That, basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption!-what are they?

Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now.