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...DOWN THE BROOK by ROBERT FROST OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO by EZRA POUND THE VIRTUOSO; IN IMITATION OF SPENCER'S STYLE AND STANZA by MARK AKENSIDE LONDON SNOW by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES SOMEBODY'S DARLING by MARIE LA CONTE SHE CAME AND WENT by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE BATTLE OF NASEBY by THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY |