Portage sentinel. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1845-1854, 1853-09-07
D2. EEATT1E.


a.tsOnce more has the earth completed her cir
cult round the burning and brilliant luminary OF
Heaven 4 This wheels Of time still roll on, and
bury every moment in the dust, the wrecks of for
mer rep solution. The monuments of art and gen
ius, the temples Of ambition, pride and vanity,
every moment spring up and hurled to the earth
In the path OF man, and serve to remind him oil the
inutability of ali human greatness and all human
grandoer. To him how pregnant with instruc-
ton are the wrecks, and ruins, and revolutions of
time. They are the oracles Of ages-they speak
like trumpet from the tomb. They speak with
a voice Of thunder to the heart-a voice more i'm
prassiye than the song of Tully, more symphoni-
GUS than the harp Of Homer, more picturesque
than the pencil of Appalles l. feel in my soul
the grandeur of my exalted throne. see the
venerable shade of time as he stand for moment
on the pedestal Of years; his white locks stream
ing in the winds of winter; his aged hand point
ing to the ruins of empires, and his trembling
form bending over tombs of oriental genius where
the lamp of glory still burns, and the light i'm
mortality streams. ..-.s =.
Roll back the billowy tide eoftime!-unrolL the
moulderfng record of+ages! What scenes are
presented the startled imagination of man. He
.beholds his own, destiny, and the doom of his
noblest achievement. He builds the colossal
temple Of his renown-he dedicates it to other
ages-it stands on rock, and bathes its high bat
Elements in the blue. clouds of Heaven, but, be-
hold triumphant time hurls it with all its gran
deurs to the dust So tits with man himself, whose
hot hurried existence preciPitates the hour OF
his own dissolution. And so it is with the en-
pires Of the earth--they rise, flourish, and pass
away. as if they had never been. Where are
her thousands of cities, her Thebes, her Memphis,
her oracle ofAmmon! The red arm of the Goth
and the Vaudal hath levelled them with the dust;
the serpent now inhabits the temple where the
worshipper once knelt the knee Of adoration-the
oracle hath been silent for ages, and the priestess
long since fed from her falling shrine. And
where are the cloud-capt pyramids of Egypt, the
wonder Of sbe world! Alas, they still stand as
where arstthe kings who planned. and the millions
of miserable slaves who erected them? Gone
down to the grave; the rank weed waves over
their n1ouldering bones And such shall be the
fate of those pyramids which have stood for ages
asthe beacons of misguided ambition; the waves
of time shall roll over them and bury them for
ever in the general mausoleum of ages.
And hath all the glory and grandeur of the
world thus yielded to the victorious tooth of time?
Go seek am answer amid the wreck of Palmyra,
Balbee and Jerusalem. Behold the city of God
hath fallen through her tottered temples and
ruined battlements, the shade-born beetle wheels
his dreary flight, and the roaring lion of the
desert hath made his lair in the sepulehre of the
Sayir. The musing traveller in vain searches for
the splendid temple of Solomon; its crumbng
columns are beneath his feet; its sublime image
ry ispictured in the landscape of imagination but
the glory-of the world hath departed forever
Oh! where are the millions of once active beings
who inhabited the sacred city, and whose voices
once made the temple vocal with the songs of
praise? Alas, they are the undistinguish-
able wrecks of time. Their bones are bleaching
ing on their native hills, even more deso1ate than
their once celebrated city. 49,.
Time, like death is an impartial conqueror -
The monuments Of genius and the arts fall alike