Classic Poem

Before him now another scene
Had living beauties to display,
Where Georgian valleys robed in green,
Stretched outward like a carpet, lay.
One of earth's happy fertile nooks
Where column-like the ruins stand;
O'er stones of every hue, the brooks
Run downward babbling through the land.
The nightingales among the roses
Sing tuneful love in accents fond
To graceful mates that ne'er respond;
The plane-tree's spreading shade discloses
The spot where ivy thick reposes;
Here gorges where from burning day
The timid deer lie hid away;
And light, and life, and leaves that rustle,
And voices' hundred-sounding bustle,
And plants whose thousand breaths compete,
And fierce voluptuous noonday heat;
And nights whose aromatic dew
Distils a freshness ever new;
And stars that are as bright as eyes,
As glances of the Georgian maid.
But nature in all charm arrayed
To no new throb of life gave rise
Within that outlaw's sterile breast,
Save for a hostile, cold unrest;
And that which here he contemplated,
He looked with scorn upon and hated.