Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where are they?
Thy waters wash'd them while they yet were free,
And many a tyrant since their shores obey,
The stranger, slave, or savage—their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts," &c.
The sentiment is clear enough, although not well expressed; and the use of the present tense, "obey," for "have obeyed," is not at all warranted by the usage of our language. In plain prose, it means—
"Thy waters washed their shores while they were independent, and do so still, although many a race of tyrants has successively reigned over them since then: their decay has converted many fertile regions to wildernesses, but thou art still unchanged."
Not having your earlier volumes at hand, I cannot be sure that these conjectures of mine are original (the correction in the punctuation of the fourth line certainly is not), and have only to request the
forbearance of any of your correspondents whose "thunder" I may have unwittingly appropriated.
J. S. Warden.