Who shapes the carven word, the lean, true line, And builds with syllable and chiselled phrase, To rear a sheltering temple and a shrine To house a dream through brief and meagre days Must know that time wears words away like stone And blurs the sharpness of the clean, straight thought; A ghost will wander out and leave alone And tenantless the temple that he wrought. This will be ruins for another day, Of lichen-bitten stone and empty tower, A tumbled shrine whose god has moved away . . . Yet later-comers, in some moon-hushed hour, May find a strange light haunting still the shade, And footprints that no mortal feet had made. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DANTE by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT THE SCRUTINY; SONG by RICHARD LOVELACE EXHORTATION TO PRAYER by MARGARET MERCER BEAUTY ROHTRAUT by EDUARD FRIEDRICH MORIKE GIRL TO SOLDIER ON LEAVE by ISAAC ROSENBERG |