Still there is remaining
Something of the past,
Many a broken column
Down to earth is cast,
Tangled with the long green grass.
Yet some graceful arches
Green with moss and weeds,
Tell where stood the altar
’Mid the sighing reeds—
Sighing, as the night-winds pass,
For the doom of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still the ground is haunted
With those other days,
O’er which memory lingers,
While the mind portrays
Mighty chiefs and deeds of old.
Mighty are the shadows
Flitting o’er the scene;
Earth hath sacred places
Where the dead have been.
Glorious are the names enrolled
On the page of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still their solemn presence
Is upon the air;
And the stars and moonlight
Of the past declare—
So in other days they shone,
When the young avenger
In the temple stood,
Calling on the midnight,
To hear his vow of blood.
Rome nigh trembled on her throne
With the wars of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Yet the Roman poet
Hallowed with his song,
Tales of olden warfare,
Still have strife and wrong
Mourned man’s progress over earth.
44
