THE world is older than our earliest dates; All thoughts, all feelings, all desires, all fates, Were known and tested, long ere Adam's crime Set the keen sword of flame at Eden-gates! Billions of years on billions more have fled, Since first love's kiss a maiden cheek turned red; Since the first mother nursed her innocent babe -- The first wild mourner wept above his dead. These ancient clods our vagrant feet displace, May once have held the loftiest soul of grace; This dateless dust that dims our garden flowers, May once have smiled -- a beauteous woman's face! Older than all man's wisdom and his dreams, Older than all which is, than all which seems, Our world rolls on, where wrapped in cloud-like fire, Phantasmal, pale, her awful death-morn gleams! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THESMOPHORIAZUSAE: WOMEN'S CHORUS by ARISTOPHANES SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 28 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING THE SEA GYPSY [OR GIPSY] by RICHARD HOVEY SUMMER'S JOE by PATRICK JOHN MCALISTER ANDERSON DELIA. AN ELEGY by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD CLIO, NINE ECLOGUES IN HONOUR OF NINE VIRTUES: 2. OF GRATITUDE by WILLIAM BASSE |