_Where will you have your virtuous names safe laid? In gorgeous tombs, in sacred cells secure? Do you not see, those prostrate heaps betrayed Your fathers bones, and could not keep them sure? And will you trust deceitful stones fair laid, And think they will be to your honour truer?_ _No, no, unsparing time will proudly send A warrant unto wreck, that with one frown Will all these mockeries of vain-glory rend, And make them as before, ungrac’d, unknown. Poor idle honours that can ill defend Your memories that cannot keep their own!_ _And whereto serves that wondrous trophy now, That on the goodly plain near_ Wilton _stands? That huge dumb heap, that cannot tell us how, Nor what, nor whence it is, nor with whose hands, Nor for whose glory it was set to show, How much our pride mocks that of other lands._ _Whereon when as the gazing passenger Hath greedy look’d with admiration, And fain would know its birth, and what it were, How there erected, and how long agone; Inquires and asks his fellow-traveller, What he hath heard, and his opinion!_ _And he knows nothing; then he turns again, And looks and sighs, and then admires afresh, And in himself with sorrow doth complain, The misery of dark forgetfulness. Angry with time, that nothing should remain, Our greatest wonders wonder to express._ _Then ignorance, with fabulous discourse, Robbing fair art and cunning of their right, Tells how those stones were by the devil’s force, From_ Africk _brought, to_ Ireland _in a night: And thence to_ Britannie, _by magick course, From giants hand redeem’d by_ Merlin’s _sleight._ _And then near_ Ambry _plac’d, in memory Of all those noble_ Britons _murder’d there, By_ Hengist _and his_ Saxon _treachery, Coming to parle in peace at unaware. With this old legend then, credulity Holds her content, and closes up her care._ _And as for thee, thou huge and mighty frame, That stands corrupted so by times despite, And gives no evidence to save their fame, That set thee there, and testify their right: And art become a traitor to their name, That trusted thee with all the best they might._ _Thou shall stand, still belyed and slandered, The only gazing stock of ignorance, And by thy guilt the wise admonished, Shall never more desire such heaps t’ advance, Nor trust their living glory with the dead, That cannot speak, but leave their fame to chance._ _Tho’ time with all his power of years, hath laid Long battery, back’d with undermining age, Yet thou makes head, only with thy own aid, And war with his all conquering forces wage; Pleading the heavens prescription to be free, And have a grant t’ indure as long as he._