SAINT MONICA.
123
The broken arch: or follows with his eye,
The wall-creeper that hunts the burnish'd fly;
Sees the newt basking in the sunny ray,
Or snail that sinuous winds his shining way,
O'er the time-fretted walls of Monica.
He comes not here, from the sepulchral stone
To tear the oblivious pall that Time has thrown,
But meditating, marks the power proceed
From the mapped lichen, to the plumed weed,
From thready mosses to the veined flower,
The silent, slow, but ever active power
Of Vegetative Life, that o'er Decay
Weaves her green mantle, when returning May
Dresses the ruins of Saint Monica.
