Born with her birth:--No--he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side
Drink--drink, and live--Old Man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the Milky Way[517]
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest Nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy Sire's heart, replenishing its source[ph]
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the Universe.

CLII.

Turn to the Mole[518] which Hadrian reared on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity--
Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
To build for Giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this Dome: How smiles
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,[pi]
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

CLIII.[519]

But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous Dome,[pj][520]
To which Diana's marvel was a cell--
Christ's mighty shrine above His martyr's tomb![pk]
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle--[521]
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyaena and the jackal in their shade;[522]
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell[pl]
Their glittering mass i' the Sun, and have surveyed[pm]
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;[523]

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone--with nothing like to thee--
Worthiest of God, the Holy and the True!
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty--
Power--Glory--Strength--and Beauty all are aisled
In this eternal Ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessened--but thy mind,
Expanded by the Genius of th