Of language unto all, while memory holds. "O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But hear our words. We know that thou didst see The whole that we could utter--thou that wert A worship unto realms beyond the flood-- But we are very lonesome on these mounds, And speech doth make the burden of sad thought Endurable; while these, the people new, That take our land, may haply learn from us What wonder went before them; for no word E'er came from thee, so beautiful, so lone. Throned in thy still domain, superbly calm And silent as a god. Here empires rose and died; Their very dust, beyond the Atlantic borne In the pale navies of the charter'd wind, Stains the white Alp. Here the proud city ranged Spire after spire, like star ranged after star Along the dim empyrean, till the air Went mad with splendor, and the dwellers cried, "Our walls have married Time!"--Gone are the marts, The insolent citadels, the fearful gates, The pictured domes that curved like starry skies; Gone are their very names! The royal Ghost Cannot discern the old imperial haunts, But goes about perplexéd like a mist Between a ruin and the awful stars. Nations are laid beneath our feet. The bard Who stood in Song's prevailing light, as stands The apocalyptic angel in the sun, And rained melodious fire on all the realms; The prophet pale, who shuddered in his gloom, As the white cataract shudders in its mist; The hero shattering an old kingdom down With one clear trumpet's will: the Boy, the Sage, Subject and Lord, the Beautiful, the Wise-- Gone, gone to nothingness. The years glide on, The pitiless years! and all alike shall fail, State after State rear'd by the solemn sea, Or where the Hudson goes unchallenged past The ancient warder of the Palisades, Or where, rejoicing o'er the enormous cloud, Beam the blue Alleghanies--all shall fail: The Ages chant their dirges on the peaks; The palls are ready in the peopled vales; And nations fill one common sepulchre. Nor goes the Earth on her dark way alone. Each star in yonder vault doth hold the dead In its funereal deeps: Arcturus broods Over vast sepulchres that had grown old Before the earth was made: the universe Itself is but one mighty cemetery Rolling around its central, solemn sun.