Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-05-28
For the Sunday Appeal
THE PANTHEON.
LEbSOEA LAKE.

Fading, yet fair is Rome-lined are her paths
With ruined arches. temples, pillars. baths
Those ancient glories of her ancestors;
And wonders new. of tins era's seulptors,
Painters architects. CLEANS St. Peters here,
The mighty Coliseum ruins there,
The old-time forum indistinct to view,
Trajan's arch, Neros golden palace too
As among her buried treasures rove,
In fancy view the themes her people love;
In pride to contemplate among them ALL
Those lately reared those lettering to their fall.
Prominent art thou, aged Pantheon.
Meet subject for ones wonder, admiration,
For the associations that round thee cling,
a noted structure thou. Interesting,
For being various religions shrine;
For age. for genius thou dost enshrine.
In classic days, when pluck and valor crowned
Rome, mistress OF the world, when. gathering
round
Her throne brave patriots fought and bled,
And conquering light Of supremacy shed
Ger her thou stoodst in vigor: and dost stand
In massive grandeur perfect, while the hand
That nobly fashioned thee with the ruined forms
OF dead Rome long has moldered. storms
Directed 'gainst tkee vainly spend their power,
A charmed life is given thee as thy dover,
For while desOlating shocks terrific sound
Bent thy proud sister temples TO the ground,
Through food, and flame, and time, OH glorious
shrine,
Invulnerable proved those walls OF thine
Thy jeweled sides used once to flash and glow.
Columns with Grecian marble base below,
Clean in the bright beams of the ever watehful
sun,
That for eighteen centuries in his daily
Has smiled down on thy grandeur quite intact
With durable spiendor. Thou'st yet untracked
By vestiges of age. The breezes round
Thy lofty granite pillars long have found
\ wonted freedom-played thro ugh airy space
OF deep hallowed silenee-by pagan race
First consecrate to precious gods of stone
Graeng the sacred inches. Then, hearts prone
To fault of superstition those shrines sought,
Breathed prayers with barbaric eloquence fraught
Now, busts OF artist occupies each space,
And christian worship wipes out every trace
OF heather claims to power or existence,
Things forgot but for thy speaking presence.
Eloquent mid wreck and desolstion
of themes Time fain would hide from creation,
Could echoing walls reproduce scene and sound,
With triumphs and defeats would they resound.
They would reveal whole volumes treasured up
Through ages; tell how Romans drained the cup
Filled in the golden age with civic peace,
Prosperity; how luxurys increase
Did enervate; how Goth and Visigoth,
In hordes swooped down, surprised them in thei
sloth,
Mingled there destroying and engraiting,
| EGecting changes in everything.
How shifting fortune spied Rome's swift decline
Made thee on native soil a lonely shrine.
How Charles the Fifth in turn invaded, sacked,
| And left the feeble city all DER tracked
| With prints of horror fierce rapine and blood,
And clash and clangor (war's discordant brood)
And how, erect mid devastating storms,
Thou borest myself, while round were trembling
| forms
All these and more details couldst thou hant
down
| For minds OF rising years to feast upon,
| In reveries of what Rome used TO be,
| OF empire, faded honors and beauty.