I just found this sonnet by Adam Mickiewicz (translated here from the Polish by Edna Worthley Underwood) and published in The Crimean Sonnets. It was inspired by his trip to Crimea in 1825.
THE RUINS OF BALACLAVA
Oh, thankless Crimean land! in ruin laid
Are now the castles that were once your pride!
Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide,
And robbers arm them for the nightly raid.
Upon the lettered marble boasts are made,
Brave words on battered arms in gold descried,
And broken splendor years have scattered wide,
Beside the dead who made them are arrayed.
The Greek set shining, columned marble here.
The Latin put the Mongol horde to flight,
And Mussulmans prayed eastward morn and night.
The owl and vulture of dark wing and drear
Are fluttering like black banners overhead
In cities where the pest piles high the dead.
I wonder just how different the ruins looked almost 200 years ago. Both times I've gone to see them there have been young people and tourists climbing and crumbling them. In 2008 there was an excavation going on near one of the lower towers. This year there seems to be some reconstruction on the largest tower.
