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.
43
