THE RUINS OF HEROD'S PALACE.
The traveller sat upon a stone,
A broken column's pride,
And o'er his head a fig-tree waved
Its grateful umbrage wide,
While round him fruitful valleys smiled,
And crystal streams ran by,
And the bold mountain's forehead hoar
Rose up 'tween earth and sky.
But on a ruin'd pile he gazed,
Beneath whose mouldering gloom
The roving fox a shelter found,
And noisome bats a tomb.
"Ho, Arab!" for a ploughman wrought
The grassy sward among,
With marble fragments richly strew'd,
And terraced olives hung,
"Say, canst thou tell what ancient dome
In darkness here declines,
And strangely lifts its spectral form
Among the matted vines?"
He stay'd his simple plough, that traced
Its crooked furrow nigh,
And, while his oxen cropp'd the turf,
Look'd up with vacant eye.
