Palmyra was formerly a magnificent city of Asia, in the deserts of Arabia, about 6U miles east of Damascus, and above 20 miles west of the Euphrates, surrounded on the east, north, and west sides by a long chain of mountains. It is the Tadmor in the desert, built by Solomon—1 Kings ix. 18. Here lived the famed critic Longinus, and here Odenatus, and Zenobia his queen, formed a small kingdom, and performed wonderful exploits. The queen held out long against the Romans, but was at length taken captive, and led in triumph through the streets of Rome about A.D. 273. Its stupendous ruins are sufficient to astonish every judicious beholder. The present inhabitants have erected their mud cottages within the spacious court of a once magnificent temple of the sun.
Sad city of the silent place!Queen of the dreary wilderness!No voice of life, no passing sound,Disturbs thy dreadful calm around,Save the wild desert-dweller's roar,Which tells the reign of man is o'er.Or winds that through thy portals sighUpon their night course flitting by!
The eternal ruins frowning stand,Like giant spectres of the land;Or o'er the dead like mourners hang,Bent down by speechless sorrow's pang;Where time, and space, and loneliness,All, o'er the saddened spirit press.Around in leaden slumbers lieThe dread wastes of infinity,Where not a gentle hill doth swell,Where not a hermit shrub doth dwell;And where the song of wandering floodNe'er voiced the fearful solitude.
How gently sad our pensive tearsFlow o'er each broken arch that rearsIts grey head through the mist of years!And where are now the dreams of fame,The promise of a deathless name?Alas! the deep delusion's gone!And all except the mouldering stone,The wreath that decked the victor's hair,Hath like his glory withered there.And Time's immortal garments twineO'er desolation's mournful shrine,Like youth's embrace around decline.O'er Beauty's dark and desert bedAges of dreamless sleep have fled,And in the domes where once she smiled,The whispering weeds are waving wild.The prince's court is the jackal's lair—He peeps through Time's cold windows there;Broken the harp, and all unstrung—Perished the strains the minstrel sung;The moss of ages is their pall,And dull oblivion hides them all.Yet there, though now no mortal eyeLooks forth upon the earth and sky,The evening star steals out as mild,Above the lone and mighty wild,As when young lovers hailed its light,Far in the dark-blue fields of night;And dews as brightly gem the groundAs when a garden smiled around.
Go read thy fate, thou thing of clay,In wrecks of ages rolled away!Bead it in this dread book of doom,A city crumbled to a tomb!Where the lorn remnants of the pastShed deeper sadness o'er the waste,Where Melancholy breathes her spell,And Chroniclers of ruin dwell.
