Of late, me thought in France I miss’d my way,
Amid a columnless deserted plain;
No man or beast upon it did remain,
Swept off by Discord’s wide destroying strife:
Ne planted fence, ne field of waving grain,
Marking the toiling farmer’s busy life,
But ruined huts and castles, brent, were wondrous rife.
III.
Yet on this plain, most goodly to behold,
Saw I a temple tow’ring to the sky,