Column and arch, with sculpture traced,
Crush’d by the peepul’s[[39]] circling folds,
Like writhing Laocoon embraced,
Art dies—and nature empire holds.
Hail, sombre fabric! type of life
Once gay and smiling, now forlorn;
Wreck of thyself, with ruin rife,
Of all thy first attractions shorn.
Like some volcano—dead its fires—
Here now no more the passions rage;