| |
TO a hope | |
| Not less ambitious once, among the wilds | |
| Of Sarum’s Plain, my youthful spirit was raised; | |
| There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs | |
| Trackless and smooth, or paced the bare white roads | 5 |
| Lengthening in solitude their dreary line, | |
| Time with his retinue of ages fled | |
| Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw | |
| Our dim ancestral past in vision clear;— | |
| Saw multitudes of men, and here and there | 10 |
| A single Briton clothed in wolf-skin vest, | |
| With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold; | |
| The voice of spears was heard,—the rattling spear | |
| Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength, | |
| Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty. | 15 |
| I called on Darkness; but before the word | |
| Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take | |
| All objects from my sight; and lo! again | |
| The desert visible by dismal flames: | |
| It is the sacrificial altar, fed | 20 |
| With living men,—how deep the groans! the voice | |
| Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills | |
| The monumental hillocks, and the pomp | |
| Is for both worlds, the living and the dead. | |
| At other moments (for through that wide waste | 25 |
| Three summer days I roamed) where’er the Plain | |
| Was figured o’er with circles, lines, or mounds, | |
| That yet survive,—a work, as some divine, | |
| Shaped by the Druids, so to represent | |
| Their knowledge of the heavens, and image forth | 30 |
| The constellations,—gently was I charmed | |
| Into a waking dream, a reverie | |
| That, with believing eyes, where’er I turned, | |
| Beheld long-bearded teachers, with white wands | |
| Uplifted, pointing to the starry sky, | 35 |
| Alternately, and plain below, while breath | |
| Of music swayed their motions, and the waste | |
| Rejoiced with them and me in those sweet sounds. | |
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