The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles Vol. 2. Bowles William Lisle

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of other times,

      Sad shadow of the ancient world, come forth!

      Thou who has slept four thousand years, awake!

      Rise from the cavern's last recess, and say,

      What giant cleft in twain the neighbouring rocks,5

      Then slept for ages in vast Ogo's Cave,6

      And left them rent and frowning from that hour;

      Say, rather, when the stern Archangel stood,

      Above the tossing of the flood, what arm

      Shattered this mountain, and its hollow chasm

      Heaped with the mute memorials of that doom!

      Spirit of other times, thou speakest not!

      Yet who could gaze a moment on that wreck

      Of desolation, but must pause to think

      Of the mutations of the globe – of time,

      Hurrying to onward spoil – of his own life,

      Swift passing, as the summer light, away —

      Of Him who spoke, and the dread storm went forth.

      The surge came, and the surge went back, and there —

      There – when the black abyss had ceased to roar,

      And waters, shrinking from the rocks and hills,

      Slept in the solitary sunshine – there

      The bones that strew the inmost cavern lay:

      And when forgotten centuries had passed,

      And the gray smoke went up from villages,

      And cities, with their towers and temples, shone,

      And kingdoms rose and perished – there they lay!

      The crow sailed o'er the spot; the villager

      Plodded to morning toil, yet undisturbed

      They lay: – when, lo! as if but yesterday

      The Archangel's trump had thundered o'er the deep

      The mighty shade of ages that are passed

      Towers into light! Say, Christian, is it true,

      That dim recess, that cavern, heaped with bones,

      Will echo to thy Bible!

      But a while

      Here let me stand, and gaze upon the scene;

      That headland, and those winding sands, and mark

      The morning sunshine, on that very shore

      Where once a child I wandered. Oh! return,

      (I sigh) return a moment, days of youth,

      Of childhood, – oh, return! How vain the thought,

      Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,

      Unblamed, may dally with imaginings;

      For this wide view is like the scene of life,

      Once traversed o'er with carelessness and glee,

      And we look back upon the vale of years,

      And hear remembered voices, and behold,

      In blended colours, images and shades

      Long passed, now rising, as at Memory's call,

      Again in softer light.

      I see thee not,

      Home of my infancy – I see thee not,

      Thou fane that standest on the hill alone,7

      The homeward sailor's sea-mark; but I view

      Brean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands,

      Weston; and, far away, one wandering ship,

      Where stretches into mist the Severn sea.

      There, mingled with the clouds, old Cambria draws

      Its stealing line of mountains, lost in haze;

      There, in mid-channel, sit the sister holms,8

      Secure and tranquil, though the tide's vast sweep,

      As it rides by, might almost seem to rive

      The deep foundations of the earth again,

      Threatening, as once, resistless, to ascend

      In tempest to this height, to bury here

      Fresh-weltering carcases!

      But, lo, the Cave!

      Descend the steps, cut rudely in the rock,

      Cautious. The yawning vault is at our feet!

      Long caverns, winding within caverns, spread

      On either side their labyrinths; all dark,

      Save where the light falls glimmering on huge bones,

      In mingled multitudes. Ere yet we ask

      Whose bones, and of what animals they formed

      The structure, when no human voice was heard

      In all this isle; look upward to the roof

      That silent drips, and has for ages dripped,

      From which, like icicles, the stalactites

      Depend: then ask of the geologist,

      How nature, vaulting the rude chamber, scooped

      Its vast recesses; he with learning vast

      Will talk of limestone rock, of stalactites,

      And oolites, and hornblende, and graywacke —

      With sounds almost as craggy as the rock

      Of which he speaks – feldspar, and gneis, and schorl!

      But let us learn of this same troglodyte,9

      Who guides us through the winding labyrinth,

      The erudite "Professor" of the cave,

      Not of the college; stagyrite of bones.

      He leads, with flickering candle, through the heaps

      Himself has piled, and placed in various forms,

      Grotesque arrangement, while the cave itself

      Seems but his element of breathing! Look!

      This humereus is that of the wild ox.

      The very candle, as with sympathy,

      Flares while he speaks, in glimmering wonderment!

      But who can mark these visible remains,

      Nor pause to think how awful, and how true,

      The dread event they speak! What monuments

      Hath man, since then, the lord, the emmet, raised

      On earth! He hath built pyramids, and said,

      Stand there! and in their solitude they stood,

      Whilst, like the camel's shadow on the sands

      Beneath them years and ages passed. He said,

      My name shall never die! and like the God

      Of silence,10 with his finger on his lip,

      Oblivion mocked, then pointed to a tomb,

      'Mid vast and winding vaults, without a name.

      Where art thou, Thebes? The chambers of the dead

      Echo, Behold! and twice ten thousand men,

      Even in their march of rapine and of blood,

      Involuntary halted,11

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