Classic Poem

One, walking through drear wastes of sand,
Saw by the lonely way,
A ghost that loomed above the land,
Mocking the sunlit day.

An antique column, quaintly wrought,
With symbols weird and strange,
By men long faded from our thought
Through time's relentless change.

The songs of love, and joyous cheers
Of some forgotten age,
Had echoed round it for long years,
A sad, sweet heritage;

And winds of sunny shores had told,
By which the bright seas roll,
Till its cold silence seemed to hold
The yearning of a soul.

With fierce, imperious, voiceless scorn,
It bitter question made,
Of some bright, blossom, fragrant morn,
And dreamy orchard shade,

When priests in solemn pageant crept,
Through temples cool and dim,
And down the marble distance swept
The cadence of a hymn.

Then from the banks of rippling streams,
Spread far the fruitful plain,
And the warm sun's resplendent beams
Lay on the bending grain.

And now where once a city fair
In stately grace had grown,
It rises in the desert bare,
A shaft of sculptured stone.