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| A RUINED city! In the heart | |
| Of the deep wilderness of woods | |
| It stands immured,—where seldom foot | |
| Of passing traveller intrudes. | |
| The groves primeval year by year | 5 |
| Above the spot renew their blooms, | |
| Year after year cast down their wealth | |
| Of foliage in these desert tombs. | |
| |
| Altar and idol here arise | |
| Inscribed with hieroglyphics strange; | 10 |
| Column and pyramid sublime, | |
| Defaced by centuries of change. | |
| Here idols from their pedestals | |
| Displaced by roots of mightiest girth; | |
| There, by a close-embracing branch | 15 |
| Half lifted in the air from earth; | |
| Or from their stations prostrate thrown, | |
| Their huge proportions strew the ground, | |
| With vines and brambles overgrown, | |
| With interlacing creepers bound. | 20 |
| |
| No sound of life! save when at eve | |
| The Indian’s hatchet cleaves through wood, | |
| Or trips the Indian damsel by, | |
| Singing to cheer the solitude. | |
| No sound, save when the sobbing breeze | 25 |
| Sighs through the forest’s dim arcades, | |
| Or shrill call of the red macaw, | |
| Or parrot’s gabble in the glades; | |
| Or when the chattering monkey troop | |
| Glide o’er the tree-tops in their race, | 30 |
| Like wandering spirits of the dead, | |
| Haunting the shadows of the place. | |
| |
| Egypt’s colossal skeletons | |
| Of temples and of wondrous shrines, | |
| In the unwatered sands repose, | 35 |
| Where hot the sultry summer shines; | |
| But forests lonely and immense | |
| Enshroud these ruins from the sight, | |
| And with their tangled barriers guard | |
| The hidden secrets from the light. | 40 |
| Tradition has no tale to tell | |
| And science no recórd to give | |
| Of those who reared these ancient walls,— | |
| Of the lost race that here did live. | |
| |
| All desolate these ruins rest, | 45 |
| Like bark that in mid-ocean rolls, | |
| Her name effaced, her masts o’erthrown, | |
| And none remaining of the souls | |
| That once sailed in her, to relate | |
| From what far-distant port she came; | 50 |
| Whither she sailed and what her fate, | |
| And what her nation and her name. | |
| But only may conjecture guess | |
| The fancied story of this place, | |
| And from these crumbling ruins gain | 55 |
| Some knowledge of the vanished race. | |
| |
| The wanderer from foreign land | |
| With awe beholds each mystic spot, | |
| Ruins of unrecorded years, | |
| The relics of a race forgot. | 60 |
| Beneath each gray, sepulchral cairn | |
| He delves to find the heathen bones, | |
| The statues of imperial kings, | |
| The broken monumental stones. | |
| All round are sculptured pedestals | 65 |
| Mid shivered columns wide outspread, | |
| Where mighty roots of forest trees | |
| Spring from the ashes of the dead, | |
| That in their growth had levelled low | |
| The pyramids the soil that strow. | 70 |
| |
| Here flowering creepers, glossy vines, | |
| The shattered monoliths o’erswept, | |
| And flowers mid painted potteries | |
| And shapely urns luxuriant crept. | |
| The dust with antique treasure teems, | 75 |
| Weapons and ornaments of yore, | |
| Great vases carved in arabesques, | |
| Idols, that heathen tribes adore. | |
| |
| Out in the green savanna lands | |
| The prostrate stones in masses lay, | 80 |
| Colossal heads with staring eyes | |
| And fractured limbs of granite gray; | |
| The ruins of a race extinct, | |
| The hieroglyphs of language dead, | |
| Memorials of rites long lost, | 85 |
| The arms, the wealth of empires fled. | |
| |
| The stranger’s voice with awe is stilled, | |
| His soul with fascination filled, | |
| When musing in that silent mood, | |
| With sad, gray plains extended round, | 90 |
| Amid the hum of insect life, | |
| Mid trees with scarlet blossoms crowned, | |
| Mid all the bloom and solemn pomp | |
| Of tropic nature’s wondrous place, | |
| Amid the temples and the graves | 95 |
| Of a once haughty, vanished race. | |
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