AH, if man's boast and man's advance be vain, And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, And the lone Tree foreknow it, and the Dome, The monstrous island of the middle main; If each inheritor must sink again Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam? -- I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain. What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul's Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. "God keeps," I said, "our little flock of years." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY: THE GHOST WHOSE LIPS WERE WARM; FOR GEOFFREY GORER by EDITH SITWELL ONLY A WOMAN by DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK by THOMAS HARDY OUT FROM A DREAM by ELLA ALLISON NUPTIAL ODE ON THE MARRIAGE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN |