Page:Poems (1853).djvu/227

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Can save from that Lethean tide
 That sweeps so dark along,
A people’s name;—a people’s fame
 To future time prolong,
As Troy still lives and only lives
 In Homer’s deathless song.

What though to buried Nineveh
 The traveller may come,
And roll away the stone that hides
 That long forgotten tomb;—
He questions its mute past in vain,
 Its oracles are dumb.

What though he stand where Balbec stood
 Gigantic in its pride;
No voice comes o’er that silent waste,
 Lone, desolate and wide;—
They had no bard, no orator,
 No statesman,—and they died.

They lived their little span of life,
 They lived and died in vain;—
They sank ingloriously beneath
 Oblivion’s silent reign,
As sank beneath the Dead Sea wave
 The Cities of the Plain.