For ever growing; where the common eye Can but the bare and rocky bed descry; There Science loves to trace her tribes minute, The juiceless foliage, and the tasteless fruit; There she perceives them round the surface creep, And while they meet their due distinction keep; Mix'd but not blended; each its name retains, And these are Nature's ever-during stains. And wouldst thou, Artist! with thy tints and brush, Form shades like these? Pretender, where thy blush? In three short hours shall thy presuming hand Th' effect of three slow centuries command? Thou may'st thy various greens and grays contrive; They are not Lichens, nor like ought alive;- But yet proceed, and when thy tints are lost, Fled in the shower, or crumbled by the frost; When all thy work is done away as clean As if thou never spread'st thy gray and green; Then may'st thou see how Nature's work is done, How slowly true she lays her colours on; When her least speck upon the hardest flint Has mark and form, and is a living tint; And so embodied with the rock, that few Can the small germ upon the substance view. Seeds, to our eyes invisible, will find On the rude rock the bed that fits their kind; There, in the rugged soil, they safely dwell, Till showers and snows the subtle atoms swell, And spread th' enduring foliage;--then we trace The freckled flower upon the flinty base; These all increase, till in unnoticed years The stony tower as gray with age appears; With coats of vegetation, thinly spread, Coat above coat, the living on the dead; These then dissolve to dust, and make a way For bolder foliage, nursed by their decay: The long-enduring Ferns in time will all Die and depose their dust upon the wall; Where the wing'd seed may rest, till many a flower Show Flora's triumph o'er the falling tower. But ours yet stands, and has its Bells renown'd For size magnificent and solemn sound; Each has its motto: some contrived to tell, In monkish rhyme, the uses of a bell; Such wond'rous good, as few conceive could spring From ten loud coppers when their clampers swing. Enter'd the Church--we to a tomb proceed, Whose names and titles few attempt to read; Old English letters, and those half pick'd out, Leave us, unskilful readers, much in doubt; Our sons shall see its more degraded state; The tomb of grandeur hastens to its fate; That marble arch, our sexton's favourite show, With all those ruff'd and painted pairs below; The noble Lady and the Lord who rest Supine, as courtly dame and warrior drest; All are departed from their state sublime, Mangled and wounded in their war with Time, Colleagued with mischief: here a leg is fled, And lo! the Baron with but half a head: Midway is cleft the arch; the very base Is batter'd round and shifted from its place. Wonder not, Mortal, at thy quick decay - See! men of marble piecemeal melt away; When whose the image we no longer read, But monuments themselves memorials need. With few such stately proofs of grief or pride,