Bright on your view such forms their splendour shed As burst on prophet-bards in ages fled: Forms that to trace no hand but yours might dare, Darkly sublime, or exquisitely fair; These o’er the walls your magic skill array’d, Glow in rich sunshine, gleam through melting shade, Float in light grace, in awful greatness tower, And breathe and move, the records of your power. Inspired of heaven! what heighten’d pomp ye cast O’er all the deathless trophies of the past! Round many a marble fane and classic dome, Asserting still the majesty of Rome-- Round many a work that bids the world believe What Grecian Art could image and achieve, Again, creative minds, your visions throw Life’s chasten’d warmth and Beauty’s mellowest glow. And when the Morn’s bright beams and mantling dyes Pour the rich lustre of Ausonian skies, Or evening suns illume with purple smile The Parian altar and the pillar’d aisle, Then, as the full or soften’d radiance falls On angel-groups that hover o’er the walls, Well may those temples, where your hand has shed Light o’er the tomb, existence round the dead, Seem like some world, so perfect and so fair, That nought of earth should find admittance there, Some sphere, where beings, to mankind unknown, Dwell in the brightness of their pomp alone! Hence, ye vain fictions! fancy’s erring theme! Gods of illusion! phantoms of a dream! Frail, powerless idols of departed time, Fables of song, delusive, though sublime! To loftier tasks has Roman Art assign’d Her matchless pencil, and her mighty mind! From brighter streams her vast ideas flow’d, With purer fire her ardent spirit glow’d. To her ’twas given in fancy to explore The land of miracles, the holiest shore; That realm where first the Light of Life was sent, The loved, the punish’d, of th’ Omnipotent! O’er Judah’s hills her thoughts inspired would stray, Through Jordan’s valleys trace their lonely way; By Siloa’s brook, or Almotana’s deep,[10] Chain’d in dead silence, and unbroken sleep; Scenes, whose cleft rocks and blasted deserts tell Where pass’d th’ Eternal, where his anger fell! Where oft his voice the words of fate reveal’d, Swell’d in the whirlwind, in the thunder peal’d, Or, heard by prophets in some palmy vale, “Breathed still small” whispers on the midnight gale. There dwelt her spirit--there her hand portray’d, Midst the lone wilderness or cedar-shade, Ethereal forms with awful missions fraught, Or patriarch-seers absorb’d in sacred thought, Bards, in high converse with the world of rest, Saints of the earth, and spirits of the blest. But chief to Him, the Conqueror of the grave, Who lived to guide us, and who died to save; Him, at whose glance the powers of evil fled, And soul return’d to animate the dead;