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CRUCE AND CORONA.
Where nightly rang the shouts of combatants.And then in Athens, once the queen of artAnd learning, do they linger, while their gazeUpon its architectural wonders rests,Its sculpture, and its painting. Then farewellThey bid to Grecian shores. And when some daysAnd nights have passed, they greet the rising sunUpon a sacred plain of Palestine.
And as they gaze upon the lakes and mountsForever hallowed by the gaze Divine,An awe, a reverence comes o'er their souls,Which Nature's grandest scenes, and all of Art'sAchievements, noblest, highest, had no pow'rTo waken when in other lands they roamed.
They tread the winding paths of Olivet;They walk where once in anguish, pray'r, and tears,And bowed with grief, the Man of Sorrows trod.Across the centuries that intervene,Transported by imagination's pow'r,They seem to hear, in deep bewailing tones,The lamentation o'er Jerusalem.
And once, as shades of night are gath'ring round,They sit in silent thought 'neath olive-trees,And o'er their souls a somewhat shadow comes