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, d**hless, 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 d**h, 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.