While nature slumbers in the shade,
And Cynthia, cloth'd in paly light,
Walks her lone way, the mount I tread,
Majestic mid the gloom of night.
With reverence to the lofty hill I bow,
Where Wisdom, Virtue, taught their founts to flow.
Wan, on yon rocks' aspiring steep
Behold a Druid form, forlorn!
I see the white rob'd phantom weep—
I hear to heaven his wild harp mourn.
The temples open'd to the vulgar eye;
And Oaks departed, wake his inmost sigh.
O! lover of the twilight hour,
That calls thee from the tombs of death,
To haunt the cave, the time-struck tower,
The sea-girt cliff, the stormy heath;
Sweet is thy minstrelsy to him whose lays
First sung this hallow'd hill of ancient days.
Yet not this Druid-scene alone
Inspires the gloom-delighted muse;
Ah! many a hill to fame unknown,
With awe the tuneful wanderer views;
And oft while midnight lends her list'ning ear,
Sings darkling, to the solitary sphere.
Poor Ghost! no more the Druid band
Shall watch, Devotion-wrapt, their fire,
No more, high sounding thro' the land,
To Virtue strike the plauding lyre.
The snake along the frowning fragment creeps,
And fox obscene beneath the shadow sleeps.
No more beneath the golden hook
The treasures of the grove shall fall;
Time triumphs o'er each vanish'd oak—
The power whose might shall crush this ball—
Yet, yet, till Nature droops the head to die
Compassion grant each monument a sigh.
The bards, in lays sublime, no more
The warrior's glorious deeds relate;
Whose patriot arm a thunder bore,
That hurl'd his country's foe to fate:
Lo! mute the harp near each pale Druid hung,
Mute, like the voice that once accordant sung.
Save when the wandering breeze of morn,
Or eve's wild gale with wanton wing,
To hear the note of sorrow mourn,
Steals to the silent sleeping string,
And wildly brushing, wakes with sweetest swell,
The plaintive trembling spirit of the shell.
Here Virtue's awful voice was heard,
That pour'd the instructive truth profound,
Here Cornwall's sons that voice rever'd,
Where sullen silence sleeps around.
See where she sung, sad, melancholy, tread,
A pensive pilgrim o'er th' unconscious dead.
She calls on Alda's, Odred's name,
Sons to the darken'd world of yore!
Lur'd by whose eagle-pinion'd fame,
The stranger left his native shore,
Daring, his white sail to the winds he gave,
And sought fair knowledge o'er the distant wave.
Tho' few these awful rocks revere,
And temples that deserted lie,
The muse shall ask the tenderest tear
That ever dropt from Pity's eye,
T' embalm the ruins that her sighs deplore,
Where Wisdom, Virtue dwelt, but dwell no more.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] See Paris's Pharmacologia, vol. I, chap. "Expectorants."
[138] See page [5] of the Guide.
[139] Medical Notes on Climate, Diseases, &c. in France, Italy, and Switzerland, by James Clark, M.D. London 1820.
[140] A Short Account of some of the Principal Hospitals of France, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, with Remarks upon the Climate and Diseases of those Countries. By H. W. Carter, M.D. London 1819.
[141] "There is one class of affections for which the Atmosphere of Rome appeared to me unfavourable. These are head-aches arising from a tendency to a fullness about the head. In many cases among the English residents, I found persons not previously subject to head-aches affected with them here, and some already liable to them had been aggravated. Apoplexy, I was told, was at one time so frequent at Rome that a day of public fasting was ordered, and a particular form of prayer addressed to St. Anthony to avert so dreadful a calamity from the Holy city."
[142] Aunts and Uncles. A Cornish epithet indiscriminately applied to elderly persons.