Ay, there are glorious things even in the dust Which still must ever from the human heart Win homage next devotion. ’Tis in vain To ask the wherefore, or demand what are they Amid the keen realities of life? Old coin, or broken casque, or fretted stone-- The waste of Time--the rack upon life’s shore Thrown up by the spent waves of centuries-- They have no meaning in the vulgar tongue; Their very uses know them not--things past Into the chaos of forgotten forms. But here the root of this deep error lies. The world’s deep Lethé onward blindly glides, A perishable Present! glorious only Because no Future and no Past are seen To scare or shame its dreamy voyager. In dull forgetfulness the error lies, That hath no feeling of the mighty Past Espoused to sense, and purblind as the mole To all that meets the intellectual eye: To such Iona is a heap of stones, And Marathon a desert … … O, how changed! The meanest thing on which great Time hath set His awful stamp (the long-surviving thought Left by the mind of other days) appears To knowledge and the gaze of memory, More instantaneous than those words of power Which ancient legends say the tomb obeyed-- The broken pillar, and the moss-grown pile, Dilate into antique magnificence: At once the stern old rampart crowns its height-- The donjon keep, the tower of ancient pride, The rock-built fortress of old robber kings, Start into life, and from their portals pour Mailed foray forth, or pomp of feudal war. The temple swells from vacancy, o’erarching With pillared roof, and dim solemnity, The worship of old time. The dry bones live Of ancient ages: monarch, sage, and bard, Stand in their living lineaments, invested With power, or wisdom, or the gift of song.