| |
| LONELY and sad it stands: | |
| The trace of ruthless hands | |
| Is on its sides and summit, and around | |
| The dwellings of the white man pile the ground; | |
| And curling in the air, | 5 |
| The smoke of thrice a thousand hearths is there: | |
| Without, all speaks of life,—within, | |
| Deaf to the city’s echoing din, | |
| Sleep well the tenants of that silent mound, | |
| Their names forgot, their memories unrenowned. | 10 |
| |
| Upon its top I tread, | |
| And see around me spread | |
| Temples and mansions, and the hoary hills, | |
| Bleak with the labor that the coffer fills, | |
| But mars their bloom the while, | 15 |
| And steals from nature’s face its joyous smile: | |
| And here and there, below, | |
| The stream’s meandering flow | |
| Breaks on the view; and westward in the sky | |
| The gorgeous clouds in crimson masses lie. | 20 |
| |
| The hammer’s clang rings out, | |
| Where late the Indian’s shout | |
| Startled the wildfowl from its sedgy nest, | |
| And broke the wild deer’s and the panther’s rest. | |
| The lordly oaks went down | 25 |
| Before the axe,—the canebrake is a town: | |
| The bark canoe no more | |
| Glides noiseless from the shore; | |
| And, sole memorial of a nation’s doom, | |
| Amid the works of art rises this lonely tomb. | 30 |
| |
| It too must pass away: | |
| Barbaric hands will lay | |
| Its holy ruins level with the plain, | |
| And rear upon its site some goodly fane. | |
| It seemeth to upbraid | 35 |
| The white man for the ruin he has made. | |
| And soon the spade and mattock must | |
| Invade the sleepers’ buried dust, | |
| And bare their bones to sacrilegious eyes, | |
| And send them forth, some joke-collector’s prize. | 40 |
| |
