With fierce resplendence fill’d th’ unclouded sky;
No zephyr waved the palm’s majestic head,
And smooth alike the seas and deserts spread;
While desolate, beneath a blaze of light,
Silent and lonely, as at dead of night,
The wreck of Carthage lay. Her prostrate fanes
Had strew’d their precious marble o’er the plains;
Dark weeds and grass the column had o’ergrown,
The lizard bask’d upon the altar stone;
Whelm’d by the ruins of their own abodes,