Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1841/Temple and Fountain at Zagwhan
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TEMPLE AND FOUNTAIN OF ZAGWHAN.
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TEMPLE AND FOUNTAIN AT ZAGWHAN.
This fountain supplied the great Aqueduct of Carthage; and the Temple, now in ruins, was erected to the tutelar deity of the Spring. The country is singularly lovely, filled with gardens, brooks, giving motion to numerous mills, and white marabets, whose domes show to great advantage amid the dense green foliage.
Of the vacant temple
Little now remains,
Lowly are the statues,
Lowly are the fanes,
Filled with worshippers no more.
Heavily the creeper
Traces its green line
Round the fallen altar,
Now no more divine—
As it was in days of yore,
In the days of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still the fragrant myrtle,
And the olive, stand;
Still the kingly palm-tree
Clothes the summer land.
Cool above the gushing rills
Still there flows the fountain
From the silent cave,
Though no more in marble
Is the silver wave
Carried o’er the distant hills,
For the halls of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still there is remaining
Something of the past,
Many a broken column
Down to earth is cast,
Tangled with the long green grass.
Yet some graceful arches
Green with moss and weeds,
Tell where stood the altar
’Mid the sighing reeds—
Sighing, as the night-winds pass,
For the doom of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still the ground is haunted
With those other days,
O’er which memory lingers,
While the mind portrays
Mighty chiefs and deeds of old.
Mighty are the shadows
Flitting o’er the scene;
Earth hath sacred places
Where the dead have been.
Glorious are the names enrolled
On the page of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Still their solemn presence
Is upon the air;
And the stars and moonlight
Of the past declare—
So in other days they shone,
When the young avenger
In the temple stood,
Calling on the midnight,
To hear his vow of blood.
Rome nigh trembled on her throne
With the wars of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Yet the Roman poet
Hallowed with his song,
Tales of olden warfare,
Still have strife and wrong
Mourned man’s progress over earth.
But the poet lit the darkness
With a gentle light,
Calling forth such beauty
As the morn from night
Calls to sweet and sudden birth.
Such lingers around Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
In y'on twilight grotto
Might the queen complain
Of the heart’s affection,
Given—and in vain.
As she mourned will many mourn.
Why is it the poet’s sorrow
Touches many a heart?
’Tis the general knowledge
Claiming each their part.
Still those numbers sound forlorn,
Mid the stones of stately Carthage,
The ocean’s earliest queen.
Empire still has followed
The revolving sun;
Earth’s great onward progress
In the East begun—
Ruins, deserts, now are there.
Downfall waits on triumph:
Is such fate in store
For our glorious islands?
Will our English shore
Lie as desolate and bare
As the shores of fallen Carthage,
The ocean’s former queen?
L. E. L.