Poetry Archives

O stiffly shapen houses that change not,
  What conjuror’s cloth was thrown across you, and raised
To show you thus transfigured, changed,
  Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set
  In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped
In void and null profusion, how is this?
  In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?

That you lose the brick-stuff out of you
  And hover like a presentment, fading faint
And vanquished, evaporate away
  To leave but only the merest possible taint!