When shall its hour of renovation come?

Shall life possess, and beauty deck again
That withered form, and foul and dusky cheek?
Will Death resign his dull and frozen reign,
And the immortal soul return to seek
Her long-deserted dwelling, and to break
The bondage which has held in icy chains
All that was mortal of thee? will she make
Her home in thee, and shall these poor remains
Share with her heaven's pleasures or hell's pains?

Wonder of wonders! who could look on thee
And afterward survey with curious eye
The mouldering shrines where dupes have bent the knee,
Where superstition, by hypocrisy
Nurtured and fed with tales of mystery,
Has oft with timid footstep trembling trod,--
All these are worse than nothing; come and see
Where once a deathless soul held its abode,--
The wrecked and ruined palace of a God!

Farewell! Not idly has this hour been spent.
Thy silent teachings I may not forget,--
More deeply, strangely, truly eloquent,
Than all the babbled words which ever yet
Have fall'n from living lips,--they shall be set
With the bright gems which Wisdom loves to keep;
And when my spirit against fate would fret,
My eyes shall turn to thee and cease to weep,