Rome
These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonryOutskeleton Time’s central city, Rome;Whereof each arch, entablature, and domeLies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.
And cracking frieze and rotten metopeExpress, as though they were an open tomeTop-lined with caustic monitory gnome;“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”
And yet within these ruins’ very shadeThe singing workmen shape and set and joinTheir frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoinWith no apparent sense that years abrade,Though each rent wall their feeble works invadeOnce shamed all such in power of pier and groin.
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