In _Confessions_, the story is done; the man is dying. In _Love among the Ruins_, we have almost the great moment itself. The lover, alone, is musing on the beauties and the hidden wonder of the landscape before him. Here, in this flat pastoral plain, lies buried all that remains of "a city great and gay," the country's very capital, where a powerful prince once held his court. There had been a "domed and daring palace," a wall with a hundred gates--its circuit made of marble, whereon twelve men might stand abreast. Now all is pasture-land: "And such glory and perfection, see, of grass Never was" --as here, "Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold." Of the glories nothing is left but a single little turret. It was part of a tower once, a tower that "sprang sublime," whence the king and his minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured eve" smiles as it leaves the "many-tinkling fleece"; all is tranquillity, the slopes and rills melt into one grey . . . and he knows "That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come." That king looked out on every side at the splendid city, with its temples and colonnades, "All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts--and then All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each." A million fighters were sent forth every year from that city; and they built their gods a brazen pillar high as the sky, yet still had a thousand chariots in reserve--all gold, of course. . . . "Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin. Shut them in With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best!" But though love be best, it is not all. It is here to transfigure all; we must accept with it the merer things it glorifies. For life calls us, even from our love. The day is long and we must work in it; but we can meet when the day is done. In the light of this low half-moon can put off in our boat, and row across and push the prow into the slushy sand at the other side of the bay: