All your wonderful inventions,
All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
They shall pass and they shall fall.
As you sit among the idols
That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
In the bosom of the earth.
There shall come a great convulsion
Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world’s possessions
Shall be buried in one grave.
From the Centuries of Silence
We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
And the gods they worshipped then,
In the strange unmentioned cities
Built by prehistoric men.
Did they steal, and lie, and slaughter?
Did they steep their souls in shame?
Did they sell eternal virtues
Just to win a passing fame?
Did they give the gold of honour
For the tinsel of a name?
We are hurrying all together
Toward the silence and the night;
There is nothing worth the seeking
But the sun-kissed moral height—
There is nothing worth the doing
But the doing of the right.