silent as a god.
Here empires rose and died;
Their very dust, beyond the Atlantic borne
In the pale navies of the charter'd wind,
Stains the white Alp. Here the proud city ranged
Spire after spire, like star ranged after star
Along the dim empyrean, till the air
Went mad with splendor, and the dwellers cried,
"Our walls have married Time!"—Gone are the marts,
The insolent citadels, the fearful gates,
The pictured domes that curved like starry skies;
Gone are their very names! The royal Ghost
Cannot discern the old imperial haunts,
But goes about perplexéd like a mist
Between a ruin and the awful stars.
Nations are laid beneath our feet. The bard
Who stood in Song's prevailing light, as stands
The apocalyptic angel in the sun,
And rained melodious fire on all the realms;
The prophet pale, who shuddered in his gloom,
As the white cataract shudders in its mist;
The hero shattering an old kingdom down
With one clear trumpet's will: the Boy, the Sage,
Subject and Lord, the Beautiful, the Wise—
Gone, gone to nothingness.
The years glide on,
The pitiless years! and all alike shall fail,
State after State rear'd by the solemn sea,
Or where the Hudson goes unchallenged past
The ancient warder of the Palisades,
Or where, rejoicing o'er the enormous cloud,
Beam the blue Alleghanies—all shall fail:
The Ages chant their dirges on the peaks;
The palls are ready in the peopled vales;
And nations fill one common sepulchre.
Nor goes the Earth on her dark way alone.
Each star in yonder vault doth hold the dead
In its funereal deeps: Arcturus broods
Over vast sepulchres that had grown old
Before the earth was made: the universe
Itself is but one mighty cemetery
Rolling around its central, solemn sun.

We do not remember any poem on Mahomet finer than the following:

EL AMIN.