'Tis darkness all, with hateful silence join'd-- Here drowsy bats enjoy a dull repose, And marble coffins, vacant of their bones, Show where the royal dead in ruin lay! By every pyramid a temple rose Where oft in concert those of ancient time Sung to their goddess Isis hymns of praise; But these are fallen!--their columns too superb Are levell'd with the dust--nor these alone-- Where is thy vocal statue, Memnon, now, That once, responsive to the morning beams, Harmoniously to father Phoebus sung! Where is the image that in past time stood High on the summit of yon' pyramid?-- Still may you see its polish'd pedestal-- Where art thou ancient Thebes?----all bury'd low, All vanish'd! crumbled into mother dust, And nothing of antiquity remains But these huge pyramids, and yonder hills. _Time_ Old Babel's tower hath felt my potent arm I ruin'd Ecbatan and Babylon, Thy huge Colossus, Rhodes, I tumbled down, And on these pyramids I smote my scythe; But they resist its edge--then let them stand. But I can boast a greater feat than this, I long ago have shrouded those in death Who made those structures rebels to my power-- But, O return!--These piles are not immortal! This earth, with all its balls of hills and mountains, Shall perish by my hand--then how can these, These hoary headed pyramids of Egypt, That are but dwindled warts upon her body, That on a little, little spot of ground Extinguish the dull radiance of the sun, Be proof to Death and me?----Traveller return-- There's nought but God immortal----He alone Exists secure, when Man, and Death, and Time, (Time not immortal, but a fancied point In the vast circle of eternity) Are swallow'd up, and, like the pyramids, Leave not an atom for their monument! [32] The text is from the edition of 1786. The 1795 edition has the note "anno 1769." THE MONUMENT OF PHAON[33] Written 1770. Phaon, the admirer of Sappho, both of the isle of Lesbos, privately forsook this first object of his affections, and set out to visit foreign countries. Sappho, after having long mourned his absence (which is the subject of one of Ovid's finest epistles), is here supposed to fall into the company of Ismenius a traveller, who informs her that he saw the tomb of a certain Phaon in Sicily, erected to his memory by a lady of the island, and gives her the inscriptions, hinting to her that, in all probability, it belonged to the same person she bemoans. She thereupon, in a fit of rage and despair, throws herself from the famous Leucadian rock, and perishes in the gulph below. _Sappho_ No more I sing by yonder shaded stream, Where once intranc'd I fondly pass'd the day, Supremely blest, when Phaon was my theme, But wretched now, when Phaon is away!