Classic Poem

BY MRS. JULIA L. DUMONT .

Eternal vestige of departed years!
Mysterious signet of a race gone by,
Unscath'd while Ruin o'er the earth careers,
And round thy base the wrecks of ages lie.
Reveal'st thou nought to the inquiring eye?
What fearful changes Time has given birth
Since first thy form, where now the oak towers high,
A dark gray mass, rose from the verdant earth.

Ah! where are those who proudly trod thy brow,
Ere yet thy bright green coronals waved there—
The strong, the brave, their race—where is it now?
Earth's living nations no memorial bear!
Where then the sounds of life rose on the air,
A grave-like silence, long and deep, has pass'd,
Save when the wolf howl'd from his rocky lair,
Or owlet-screams rose on the fitful blast.

Bear'st thou no trace within thy sullen breast,
Thou seal'd-up relick of the mouldering dead?
Is there no record on thy form imprest
Of those who rear'd thee from thy valley bed?
Did pale Decay, with slow though lingering tread,
Consign their race to nature's common tomb?
Or sweeping Plague, with blasting wing outspread,
Their brightness quench in everlasting gloom?

And thou, that mock'st Destruction's wrathful storm,
While living worlds beneath its blast are crush'd,
Say for what end the dead upheav'd thy form,
Or consecrated thus thy breathless dust.
Did calm Devotion here, with holy trust,
Erect her temple to the living God?
Or lordly Pride, with weak ambition flush'd,
Heap up thy dark and monumental sod?

Or hid'st thou those, in thy sepulchral breast,
Who erst were scattered o'er the vales around?
A mighty tomb, where nations, laid to rest
In ghastly sleep, await the trumpet's sound,
When Earth's dim records are at length unbound,
And in her last funereal lights reveal'd,
While rising bones burst from their prison ground,
Shall then thy heaving brow its mysteries yield?

Vainly I ask—but o'er the musing soul
A noiseless voice comes from thy dust to chide:
“Man may exult in glory's glittering roll,
And o'er the earth, life, for a while preside;
But learn to know the wreck of human pride!
Her fairest names time may at length efface;
Dark o'er her cities flow Oblivion's tide,
And Death abide where life and joy have place.”