Page:Poems Elgee, 1907.djvu/41

II.
Poet thoughts of sadness breathing,
 For the temples overthrown;
Where no incense now is wreathing,
 And the gods are turned to stone.
Wandering by the graves of heroes,
 Shrouded deep in classic gloom,
Or the tombs where Egypt's Pharaohs
 Wait the trumpet and the doom.

III.
By the city, desert-hidden,^[1]
 Which Judea's mighty king
Made the Genii, at his bidding,
 Raise by magic of his ring;
By the Lake Asphaltian wander,
 While the crimson sunset glow
Flings its radiance, as we ponder
 On the buried towns below.

IV.
By the Cromleach, sloping downward,
 Where the Druid's victim bled;
By those Towers, pointing sunward,
 Hieroglyphics none have read:
In their mystic symbols seeking,
 Of past creeds and rites o'erthrown,
If the truths they shrined are speaking
 Yet in Litanies of Stone.

V.
By the Temple of the Muses,
 Where the climbers of the mount
Learned the soul's diviner uses
 From the Heliconian fount.
By the banks of dark Illyssus,
 Where the Parca walked of old,
In their crowns of white narcissus,
 And their garments starred with gold.

1. Palmyra, or Tadmor.