Poetry Archives

Dust of the desert are thy walls
  And temple-towers, O Babylon!
O’er crumbled halls the lizard crawls,
  And serpents bask in blaze of sun.

In vain kings piled the Pyramids;
  Their tombs were robbed by ruthless hands.
Who now shall sing their fame and deeds,
  Or sift their ashes from the sands?

Deep in the drift of ages hoar
  Lie nations lost and kings forgot;
Above their graves the oceans roar,
  Or desert sands drift o’er the spot.

A thousand years are but a day
  When reckoned on the wrinkled earth;
And who among the wise shall say
  What cycle saw the primal birth

Of man, who lords on sea and land,
  And builds his monuments to-day,
Like Syrian on the desert sand,
  To crumble and be blown away.

Proud chiefs of pageant armies led
  To fame and death their followers forth,
Ere Helen sinned and Hector bled,
  Or Odin ruled the rugged North.

And poets sang immortal praise
  To mortal heroes ere the fire
Of Homer blazed in Ilion lays,
  Or Brage tuned the Northern lyre.

For fame men piled the Pyramids;
  Their names have perished with their bones:
For fame men wrote their boasted deeds
  On Babel bricks and Runic stones—

On Tyrian temples, gates of brass,
  On Roman arch and Damask blades,
And perished like the desert grass
  That springs to-day—to-morrow—fades.

And still for fame men delve and die
  In Afric heat and Arctic cold;
For fame on flood and field they vie,
  Or gather in the shining gold.

Time, like the ocean, onward rolls
  Relentless, burying men and deeds;
The brightest names, the bravest souls,
  Float but an hour like ocean weeds,

Then sink forever. In the slime—
  Forgotten, lost forevermore,
Lies Fame from every age and clime;
  Yet thousands clamor on the shore.

Immortal Fame!—O dust and death!
  The centuries as they pass proclaim
That Fame is but a mortal breath,
  That man must perish—name and fame.

The earth is but a grain of sand—
  An atom in a shoreless sea;
A million worlds lie in God’s hand—
  Yea, myriad millions—what are we?

O mortal man of bone and blood!
  Then is there nothing left but dust?
God made us; He is wise and good,
  And we may humbly hope and trust.