Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79. | | | | India: Gour | | Gour | | Nicholas Michell (1807–1880) |
| | (From Ruins of Many Lands)
NOR may we pass Gour’s ruins lone and gray, | |
| Seat of Bengal’s proud lords in former day. | |
| Vast piles of brick, once grandeur’s glittering domes, | |
| Fragments of pillars—shattered, nameless tombs— | |
| High banks where poison-shrubs and jungle grow, | 5 |
| Shrouding for leagues the winding walls below,— | |
| Such is the scene; e’en Ganges’ sacred tide | |
| Hath turned, for many a year, its course aside; | |
| Like some false friend who flies, when adverse fate | |
| Hath made its victim dark and desolate: | 10 |
| Type of the Hindoo faith, which says that stream | |
| Conducts to heaven, all changeful though it seem. | |
| Yes, where the hallowed waters gushed of yore, | |
| Myriads have knelt, to worship and adore; | |
| Men of far countries, wan Disease and Age | 15 |
| Have sought these banks in weary pilgrimage, | |
| On Ganges fixed at last their rapturous eyes, | |
| And deemed its murmurs hymns of Paradise. | | | | |
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