It has vanished
like "a tale that is told;" it is passed away like a dream; the
palaces are dust; the grassy sod has grown in mounds over the
ruins of streets and fallen houses; nature has turfed them in one
common grave with their inhabitants.
The lofty palms have faded
away and given place to forest trees, whose roots spring from the
crumbled ruins; the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of
the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the
jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left
for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There
is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab
which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it.
There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed;
there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which
gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon
the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and
utter desolation. How many suns have risen and how many nights
have darkened the earth since silence has reigned amidst the
city, no man can tell. No mortal can say what fate befell those
hosts of heathens, nor when they vanished from the earth. Day
and night succeed each other, and the shade of the setting sun
still falls from the great Dagoba; but it is the "valley of the
shadow of death" upon which that shadow falls like a pall over
the corpse of a nation.
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