Cxxii

How does it strike you, this construction gaunt and gray-- Sole object, these piled stones, that gleam unground-away By twilight's hungry jaw, which champs fine all beside I' the solitary waste we grope through? Oh, no guide Need we to grope our way and reach the monstrous door Of granite! Take my word, the deeper you explore That caverned passage, filled with fancies to the brim, The less will you approve the adventure! such a grim Bar-sinister soon blocks abrupt your path, and ends All with a cold dread shape,--shape whereon Learning spends Labor, and leaves the test obscurer for the gloss, While Ignorance reads right--recoiling from that Cross! Whence came the mass and mass, strange quality of stone Unquarried anywhere i' the region round? Unknown! Just as unknown, how such enormity could be Conveyed by land, or else transported over sea, And laid in order, so, precisely each on each, As you and I would build a grotto where the beach Sheds shell--to last an hour: this building lasts from age To age the same. But why?