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(From Ruins of Many Lands)
UNLIKE Copan, yet buried, too, mid trees, | |
| Upspringing there for sumless centuries, | |
| Behold a royal city! vast and lone, | |
| Lost to each race,—to all the world unknown; | |
| Like famed Pompeii, ’neath her lava bed, | 5 |
| Till chance unveiled the “City of the Dead.” | |
| Palenque!—dark seat of kings!—as o’er the plain, | |
| Clothed with thick copse, the traveller toils with pain, | |
| Climbs the rude mound the shadowy scene to trace, | |
| He views in mute surprise thy desert grace. | 10 |
| At every step some palace meets his eye, | |
| Some figure frowns, some temple courts the sky. | |
| It seems as if that hour the verdurous earth, | |
| By genii struck, had given these fabrics birth, | |
| Save that old Time hath flung his darkening pall | 15 |
| On each tree-shaded tower and pictured wall. | |
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| The royal palace decks its stately mound, | |
| Girt by wild shrubs, by waving thistles crowned; | |
| But strength still breathes throughout the lordly pile, | |
| And lingering beauty sheds a mournful smile. | 20 |
| We walk the rooms where kings and princes met, | |
| Frown on the walls their sculptured portraits yet; | |
| Strange their costume,—ye see no native face, | |
| Lip, brow, and hue bespeak an Ethiop race. | |
| The square stone portals, smooth and glittering floors, | 25 |
| The spacious courts, and sounding corridors, | |
| The picture-writing earliest races learn, | |
| The giant figures, mournful, calm, and stern,— | |
| All point to climes beyond the Eastern sea, | |
| Egypt’s old shores, or, far Cathay! to thee: | 30 |
| How the bold ancients crossed the watery way, | |
| By star or needle, ’t is not ours to say; | |
| Enough we meet their gorgeous buildings here, | |
| Their picture-art, and creeds of gloom and fear. | |
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| Lo! o’er the dense black mass of giant trees | 35 |
| The moon upsprings, and sighs the midnight breeze; | |
| Now looks Palenque—on ruin, ruin piled— | |
| August, yet spectral,—beautiful, yet wild: | |
| The tower, just peering through the foliage green, | |
| Bathed in the beams, a silvery point is seen; | 40 |
| The moss-grown palace, temple dark and still, | |
| The shattered pillar thrown across the rill; | |
| The firefly, darting through the forest shade, | |
| The owl’s gray eyes that glare within the glade; | |
| The spells of silence on all earth that lie, | 45 |
| Naught but the cold moon moving in the sky,— | |
| No sight like this may other ruins show; | |
| They wake to wonder, while they melt to woe, | |
| And seem to breathe one voice,—that voice the knell | |
| Of races gone, whose history none may tell. | 50 |
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