Not yet-not yet-Sol pauses on the hill-
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,

And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes:
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seem'd to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frown'd before,
But ere he sunk below Citharon's head,
The cup of woe was quaff'd-the spirit fled;
The soul of him that scorn'd to fear or fly-
Who liv'd and died, as none can live or die!

But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The queen of night asserts her silent reign (1);
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,

Hides her fair face, nor girds her glowing form,
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And bright around with quiv'ring beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret:
The groves of olive scatter'd dark and wide
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress sadd'ning by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay Kiosk (2),
And, dun and sombre mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane yon solitary palm,
All tinged with varied hues arrest the eye-
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.

(1) The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration.

(2) The Kiosk is a Turkish summer-house; the Palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream at all.

Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chaf'd breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long array of sapphire and of gold,
Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown-where gentler Ocean seems to smile.

As thus within the walls of Pallas' fane
I mark'd the beauties of the land and main,
Alone and friendless, on the magic shore
Whose arts and arms but live in poet's lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turn'd to scan,
Sacred to gods, but not secure from man,
The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease,
And glory knew no clime beyond her Greece.
Hours roll'd along, and Dian's orb on high
Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky,
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god;
But chiefly, Pallas! thine, when Hecate's glare,
Check'd by the columns, fell more sadly fair
O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mus'd, and measur'd every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When, lo! a giant form before me strode,
And Pallas hail'd me in her own abode.
Yes, 'twas Minerva's self, but, ah! how chang'd
Since o'er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appeared from Phidias' plastic hand;,
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle Ægis bore no Gorgon now;

Her helm was deep indented, and her lance
Seem'd weak and shaftless, e'en to mortal glance;
The olive branch, which still she deign'd to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch and wither'd in her grasp :
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimm'd her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourn'd his mistress with a shriek of woe.

« Mortal! ('twas thus she spake) that blush of shame « Proclaims thee Briton-once a noble name« First of the mighty, foremost of the free, « Now honour'd less by all-and least by me: « Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found ;«Seek'st thou the cause? O mortal,-look around! «Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire, "I saw successive tyrannies expire;

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'Scap'd from the ravage of the Turk and Goth, Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both! Survey this vacant violated fane;

« Recount the relics torn that yet remain;

« These Cecrops placed-this Pericles adorned (1)— « That Hadrian rear'd when drooping Science mourn'd: « What more I owe let gratitude attest,

Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.

« That all may learn from whence the plund'rer came, «Th' insulted wall sustains his hated name (2).

(1) This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in particular. The Temple of Jupiter Olympius, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian : sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautiful marble and style of architecture.

(2) It is related by a late oriental traveller, that when the wholesale spoliator visited Athens, he caused his own name,

"For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,

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Below, his name-above, behold his deeds!

« Be ever hail'd with equal houour here

«The Gothic Monarch and the Pictish Peer.

« Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
<< But basely stole what less barbarians won!
«So when the lion quits his fell repast,

«Next prowls the wolf-the filthy jackal last:

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Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own;

«The last base brute securely gnaws the bone.

«Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are crost,-
<< See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
« Another name with his pollutes my shrine,

« Behold where Dian's beams disdain to shine!
« Some retribution still might Pallas claim,

« When Venus half aveng'd Minerva's shame (1). ›

She ceas'd awhile, and thus I dar'd reply,
To sooth the vengeance kindling in her eye :-

with that of his wife, to be inscribed on a pillar of one of the principal temples. This inscription was executed in a very conspicuous manner, and deeply engraved in the marble, at a very considerable elevation. Notwithstanding which precautions, some person, ( doubtless inspired by the Patron Goddess) has been at the pains to get himself raised up to the requisite height, and has obliterated the name of the laird, but left that of the lady untouched. The traveller in question accompanied this story by a remark, that it must have cost some labour and contrivance to get at the place, and could only have been effected by much zeal and deter

mination.

(1) His Lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon above; in a part not far distant are the torn remnants of the bassorelievos, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them.

"

Daughter of Jove! in Britain's injured name, "A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim!

« Frown not on England-England owns him not— Athena, no! the plunderer was a Scot (1)!

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Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyle's towers
Survey Boeotia-Caledonia's ours.

« And well I know within that bastard land (2)
« Hath wisdom's goddess never held command:
« A barren soil, where Nature's germs
«To stern sterility can stint the mind;

confin'd,

« Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
<< Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth.
<< Each genial influence nurtur❜d to resist,
<< A land of meanness, sophistry and mist:
« Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
«Dilutes with drivel every drizzling brain,
« Till burst at length each watery head o'erflows,
«Foul as their soil and frigid as their snows:
<< Ten thousand schemes of petulance and pride

Dispatch her scheming children far and wide; «Some East, some West, some-every where but North! « In quest of lawless gain they issue forth; « And thus, accursed be the day and year,

<< She sent a Pict to play the felon here.
"Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,
« As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth—

(1) The plaster wall on the west side of the temple of Minerva Polias bears the following inscription, cut in very deep characters :

Quod non fecerunt Goti

Hoc fecerunt Scoti.

Hobhouse's Travels in Greece, etc., p. 345.

(2) Irish Bastards, according to Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan.