You that have gazed long on the city's splendour, Behold its life, how thick and red it runs! From dawn to dusk and on through countless suns, Self-spending, self-creating, fixed, untender, Coarse, deathless, changeless! Do you homage render To that which with its power the spirit stuns: And will, until all things are as they once Were, in the grip of Death, the sole amender. Thousands of years ago thus in the grime Life struggled, as it struggles on to-day, As it must struggle till its latest scene: No change shall ever be except in time, Until all things as dreams are swept away, And the earth is as if it ne'er had been. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A WINTER NIGHT by WILLIAM BARNES AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM' by THOMAS HARDY THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE by THOMAS HARDY A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE SOUL AND BODY by ANDREW MARVELL AMORETTI: 34 by EDMUND SPENSER TWO OF A KIND by WALTER TALLMADGE ARNDT ON THE AMOROUS AND PATHETIC STORY OF ARCADIUS AND SEPHA by L. B. |