White as the snow which never falls
On these delicious plains,
The marble city reared aloft
Its palaces and fanes;
So delicately carved, so fair,*
The graceful buildings stand,
Such as to us are like the dreams
Of some enchanted land.
Our northern shores have sullen skies,
The mist, the frost, the rain,
And soon the fairy fabric wears
The shadow, and the stain.
But here there is a purer air,
There is more genial sky,
As if the sun remembered still
His first bright infancy.
The monarch looked not on the scene,
Although it was so fair,
The stars are out upon the sky,
And every thought fixed there.
He looked upon them as the scrolls
Prophetic of our life,
The chronicles where Fate inscribes
Our sorrow, sin, and strife;
All that we struggle with in vain,
All that we seek to shun,
The weird of that stern destiny,
Whose will must aye be done.
Who may deny that on the soul,
The coming hours may cast
Their shadow, till the future seem
As actual as the past.
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