We seem to wander over hallow'd ground:
We scan the trail of Thought, but all is overcast.
There was a time—and that is all we know!
No record lives of their ensanguin'd deeds:
The past seems palsied with some giant blow,
And grows the more obscure on what it feeds.
A rotted fragment of a human leaf;
A few stray skulls; a heap of human bones!
These are the records—the traditions brief—
'Twere easier far to read the speechless stones.