Poems (Southey)/Volume 1/Inscription 04 - For a Monument at Silbury-Hill
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INSCRIPTION IV.
For a MONUMENT at SILBURY-HILL.
This mound in some remote and dateless day
Rear'd o'er a Cheiftain of the Age[1] of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house
Some Warrior sleeps below: his gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The Bard has harp'd, but perish'd is the song
Of praise, as o'er these bleak and barren downs
The wind that passes and is heard no more.
Go Traveller, and remember when the pomp
Of earthly Glory fades, that one good deed,
Unseen, unheard, unnoted by mankind,
Lives in the eternal register of Heaven.
Rear'd o'er a Cheiftain of the Age[1] of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house
Some Warrior sleeps below: his gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The Bard has harp'd, but perish'd is the song
Of praise, as o'er these bleak and barren downs
The wind that passes and is heard no more.
Go Traveller, and remember when the pomp
Of earthly Glory fades, that one good deed,
Unseen, unheard, unnoted by mankind,
Lives in the eternal register of Heaven.
- ↑ The Northern Nations distinguished the two periods when the bodies of the dead were consumed by fire, and when they were buried beneath the tumuli so common in this country, by the Age of Fire and the Age of Hills.