Of golden “Pactolus,” where bathe his waters
The bases of Cybele's columns fair,
I paced away the hours. In wakeful mood
I mused upon the storied past awhile,
Watching the moon, that with the same mild eye
Had looked upon the mighty Lybian kings
Sleeping around me-Croesus, who had heaped
Within the mouldering portico his gold,
And Gyges, buried with his viewless ring
Beneath yon swelling tumulus—and then
I loitered up the valley to a small
And humbler ruin, where the undefiled*
Of the Apocalypse their garments kept
Spotless; and crossing with a conscious awe
The broken threshold, to my spirit's eye
It seemed as if, amid the moonlight, stood
“ The angel of the church of Sardis” still !
And I again passed onward, and as dawn
Paled the bright morning star, I lay me down,
Weary and sad, beside the river's brink,
And 'twixt the moonlight and the rosy morn,
Wrote with my fingers in the golden “sands."
Tell me, O memory! what wrote I there?
The name of the sweet child I knew at Rome !
The dust is old upon my
“ sandal-shoon,"
And still I am a piigrim ; I have roved
From wild America to spicy Ind,
And worshipped at innumerable shrines
Of beauty, and the painter's art, to me,
And sculpture, speak as with a living tongue,
And of dead kingdoms, I recall the soul,
Sitting amid their ruins. I have stored
My memory with thoughts that can allay
Fever and sadness; and when life gets dim,
And I am overladen in my years,
Minister to me. But when wearily
The mind gives over toiling, and, with eyes
Open but seeing not, and senses all
Lying awake within their chambers fine,
Thought settles like a fountain, clear and calm-
Far in its sleeping depths, as 'twere a gem,
Tell me, O memory! what shines so fair ?
The face of the sweet child I knew at Rome !
Who shall declare the secret of thy birth,
Thou old companion of the circling earth?
And having marked with keen poetic sight
Ere beast or happy bird
Through the vast silence stirred,
Roll back the folded darkness of the primal night?
Corruption-like, thou teemedst in the graves
Of mouldering systems, with dark weltering waves
Troubling the peace of the first mother's womb;
Whose ancient awful form,
With inly tossing storm,
Unquiet heavings kept—a birth-place and a tomb.
Till the life-giving Spirit moved above
The face of the waters, with creative love
Warming the hidden seeds of infant light:
What time the mighty Word
Through thine abyss was heard, And swam from out thy deeps the young day heavenly bright.
Thou and the earth, twin-sisters, as they say,
In the old prime were fashioned in the day,
And therefore thou delightest evermore
With her to lie, and play
The summer hours away,
Curling thy loving ripples up her quiet shore.
She is married, a matron long ago,
With nations at her side; her milk doth flow
Each year; but thee no husband dares to tame;
Thy wild will is thine own,
Thy sole and virgin throneThy mood is ever changing—thy resolve the same.
Sunlight and moonlight minister to thee ;-
O'er the broad circle of the shoreless sea
Heaven's two great lights for ever set and rise;
While the round vault above,
In vast and silent love, I. gazing down upon thee with his hundred eyes.
All night thou utterest forth thy solemn moan,
Counting thy weary minutes all alone;
Then in the morning thou dost calmly lie,
Deep blue, ere yet the sun
His day-work hath begun,
Under the opening windows of the golden sky.
The spirit of the mountain looks on thee
Over an hundred hills; quaint shadows flee
Across thy marbled mirror ; brooding lie
Storm-mists of infant cloud,
With a sight-baffling shroud
Mantling the grey-blue islands in the western sky.
Sometimes thou liftest up thine hands on high
Into the tempest-cloud that blurs the sky,
Holding rough dalliance with the fitful blast,
Whose stiff breath, whistling shrill,
Pierces with deadly chill
The wet crew feebly clinging to their shattered mast.
Foam-white along the border of the shore
Thine onward-leaping billows plunge and roar;
While o'er the pebbly ridges slowly glide
Cloaked figures, dim and grey,
Through the thick mist of spray,
Watching for some struck vessel in the boiling tide.
Daughter and darling of remotest eld-
Time's childhood and Time's age thou hast beheld ;
His arm is feeble and his eye is dim-
lle tells old tales again
He wearies of long pain ;Thou art as at the first : thou journeyedst not with him.
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