Restless, he knew that moon who watched him muse, Had seen a restless Cæsar brood on fame Amid the Pharaohs' broken avenues. And, circling round that fixed monition, came Woven by moonlight, random, transitory, Fragments of all the dim receding story: The moonlit water dripping from the oars Of triremes in the bay of Syracuse; The opposing bivouacs upon the shores, That knew dead Hector's and Achilles' wars. 24 He saw fall'n Carthage, Alexander's grave, The tomb of Moses in the wilderness, The moonlight on the Atlantean wave That covered all a multitude's distress: Cities and hosts and emperors departed Under the steady moon. And sullen-hearted He turned away, and, in a little, died, Even as he who hunted from his cave And struck his foe, and stripped the shaggy hide Under the moon, and was not satisfied. 25 For in the prime, thy influence was felt; When eyes first saw, thy beauty was as this; Thy quiet look bade hope, fear, passion melt Before men dreamed of empire. The abyss Of thought yawned through their jungle then, as ever Dark past, dark future, menaced their endeavour: Yet, on thy nights, stood some by hill and sea Naked; and blind impulsive spirits knelt, Not questioning why they knelt, feeling in thee Thought's strangest, sweetest, saddest mystery. 26 Still Moon, bright Moon, compassionate Moon above, Thou shinedst there ere any life began, When of his pain or of his powerless love Thou heardest not from heart of any man; Though long the earth had shaken off the vapour Left by the vanished gleams of fire, the shaper, Old, old, her stony wrinkled face did grow Ere aught but her blind elements did move; Dumb, bare, and prayerless thou saw'st her go, And afterwards again shalt see her so. 27 A time there was when Life had never been, A time will be, it will have passed away; Still wilt thou shine, still tender and serene, When Life which in thy sister's yesterday Had never flowered, will have drooped and faded; Passed with the clouds that once her bosom shaded. She will be barren then as not before, Bared of her snows and all her garments green; No darkling sea by any earthly shore Will take thy rays: thy kin will be no more. 28