Wore youth’s bright tresses when thy star arose;
And many a glorious mind, since that fair dawn,
Hath fill’d our sphere with light, now to its source withdrawn.
Earthquakes have rock’d the nations: things revered,
Th’ ancestral fabrics of the world, went down
In ruins, from whose stones Ambition rear’d
His lonely pyramid of dread renown.
But when the fires that long had slumber’d, pent
Deep in men’s bosoms, with volcanic force,
Bursting their prison-house, each bulwark rent,