Old shadows of magnificence, where now-- Where now and what your grandeur? Come and see Busts broken and thrown down, with wreathless brow, Walls stained with colours, not of paint, but thee. Moss, lichens, ferns, and lonely elder tree; That upon ruins gladly climb to bloom, And add a beauty where't is vain to be, Like to the soft moonlight in a prison's gloom, Or lovely maid in youth death-smitten for the tomb. Pride may build palaces and splendid halls; Power may display its victories and be brave; The eye finds weakest spots in strongest walls, And meets no strength that can out-wear the grave. Nature, thy handmaid and imperial slave, The pomp of splendour's finery never heeds: Kings reign and die: pride may no respite crave; Nature in barrenness ne'er mourns thy deeds: Graves, poor and rich alike, she overruns with weeds. In thy proud eye, imperial Arbiter, An insect small to prize appeareth man; His pomp and honours have o'er thee no spell, To win thy purpose from the little span Allotted unto life in Nature's plan; Trifles to him thy favour can engage; High he looks up, and soon his race is run; While the small daisy upon Nature's page, On which he sets his foot, gains endless heritage. Look at the farces played in every age By puny empires, vaunting vain display, And blush to read the historian's fulsome page, Where kings are worshipped like to gods in clay. Their pride the earth disdained and swept away, By thee, a shadow, worsted of their all-- Legions of soldiers, battle's dread array-- Kings' speeches--golden bribes--nought saved their fall; All 'neath thy feet are laid, thy robe their funeral pall. How feeble and how vain, compared to thine, The glittering pageantry of earthly kings, Though in their little light they would outshine Thy splendid sun: yet soon thy vengeance flings Its gloom around their crowns, poor puny things. What then remains of all that great hath been? A tattered state, that as a mockery clings To greatness, and concludes the idle scene-- In life how mighty thought, and found in death how mean. Thus Athens lingers on, a nest of slaves, And Babylon's an almost doubted name: Thou with thy finger writ'st upon their graves, On one obscurity, the other shame. The richest greatness or the proudest fame Thy sport concludeth as a farce at last: They were and would be, but are not the same: Tyrants, that made all subject where they passed, Become a common jest for laughter at the last. Here where I stand thy voice breathes from the ground A buried tale of sixteen hundred years, And many a Roman fragment, littered round, In each new-rooted mole-hill reappears. Ah! what is fame, that honour so reveres? And what is Victory's laurel-crowned event When thy unmasked intolerance interferes? A Caesar's deeds are left to banishment, Indebted e'en to moles to show us where he went.