midnight
No senate sits in council for the dead ; no scion of a time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house ; the general 's hand is cold , and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields , unhonoured , though in youth . The market-place is empty , the candidate for popular favour finds none whom he can represent . To chambers of painted state farewell ! -- To midnight revelry , and the panting emulation of beauty , to costly dress and birth-day shew , to title and the gilded coronet , farewell ! Farewell to the giant powers of man , -- to knowledge that could pilot the deep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shoreless ocean , -- to science that directed the silken balloon through the pathless air , -- to the power that could put a barrier to mighty waters , and set in motion wheels , and beams , and vast machinery , that could divide rocks of granite or marble , and make the mountains plain ! Farewell to the arts , -- to eloquence , which is to the human mind as the winds to the sea , stirring , and then allaying it ; -- farewell to poetry and deep philosophy , for man 's imagination is cold , and his enquiring mind can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life , for `` there is no work , nor device , nor knowledge , nor wisdom in the grave , whither thou goest ! '' -- to the graceful building , which in its perfect proportion transcended the rude forms of nature , the fretted gothic and massy saracenic pile , to the stupendous arch and glorious dome , the fluted column with its capital , Corinthian , Ionic , or Doric , the peristyle and fair entablature , whose harmony of form is to the eye as musical concord to the ear !