The world’s deep Lethé onward blindly glides, A perishable Present! glorious only Because no Future and no Past are seen To scare or shame its dreamy voyager. In dull forgetfulness the error lies, That hath no feeling of the mighty Past Espoused to sense, and purblind as the mole To all that meets the intellectual eye: To such Iona is a heap of stones, And Marathon a desert … … O, how changed! The meanest thing on which great Time hath set His awful stamp (the long-surviving thought Left by the mind of other days) appears To knowledge and the gaze of memory, More instantaneous than those words of power Which ancient legends say the tomb obeyed-- The broken pillar, and the moss-grown pile, Dilate into antique magnificence: At once the stern old rampart crowns its height-- The donjon keep, the tower of ancient pride, The rock-built fortress of old robber kings, Start into life, and from their portals pour Mailed foray forth, or pomp of feudal war. The temple swells from vacancy, o’erarching With pillared roof, and dim solemnity, The worship of old time. The dry bones live Of ancient ages: monarch, sage, and bard, Stand in their living lineaments, invested With power, or wisdom, or the gift of song.
These still are common ruins--the remains Of those who were the vulgar of their day, Who battled, built, and traded, and so died, Leaving no trace but nameless monuments, The cast attire of ages, which but serve To show the present how the past went mad, And, like Cassandra, prophesy in vain. The earth yet bears more glorious vestiges Of Time’s illustrious few, whose memory Is greater than the greatest thing that lives-- Haloed by veneration, wonder, love-- Whose very tombs stand in life’s calendar Eras of thought once seen. Is there an eye Could coldly gaze on aught that bears a trace Of Avon’s matchless master of the breast? Who could approach old Dryburgh’s tombs, and feel not The illustrious presence of his great compeer, Whose tomb yet moistens with a nation’s woe, Whose star is young in heaven? Or who can walk Unmoved the cloisters and religious aisles Where Milton lies, renowned with “prophets old,” And honoured Newton, to whom the starred vault Is an enduring monument, as much As the Pantheon’s dome is Angelo’s?