O ALL ye myriads in the ages dead, Princes and peoples great in power and trust, And great in love, -- all dwindled to fine dust! Must wolfish Time with such as you be fed, That living men awhile may keep ahead Upon the bitter road, where ill and just Hear, as they run, the hollow panting gust From fangs of hunger never surfeited? No! live again, brave world (I would have said), Nor for our vantage in the breach be cast, -- I could have wept for pity of you, dead, But I remembered our own fate instead, -- How, to the age that springs before us fast, We shall become the sacrificial past. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NIGHT PIECE (2) by EDITH SITWELL EJACULATORY PRAYER by JOHANNA AMBROSIUS EPITAPH FOR GAVIN HAMILTON by ROBERT BURNS |