Here, Echo, was thy reign of old,
Among these hills, a mystic crowd
Whose thunder rolled
When they speak loud
Still shocks the sea: here thy hair grew
Long as a cloud whose shadow drew
Itself o'er chaos, ere Time rose
With life and death and all of those
Who live and die, whose weakest word
Thine ears have heard;
Still as thou sitt'st with sightless eyes
On a bright cloud in the lone vale,
Or leaning o'er a mountain rill
Dost hark the ebbing roar
Of a dead sea on some primeval shore,
Whose unrecorded memories
Are like the language of old gods who fell
From some starred pinnacle
In the lost years — as all things will
Too fall at last, and the great tale
Of Time be never more retold;
Ay, e'en when chaos is re-rolled
O'er the opprest and the oppressor, thou
(Unseen, and but a word within that wail)
Shalt pass as in a trance where thought may go
When all is lying low.