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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
270
VI. GENOA.
Ah! what avails it, Genoa, now to theeThat Doria, feared by monarchs, once was thine?
Univied ruin! in thy slow decline
From virtuous greatness, what avails that he
Whose prow descended first the Hesperean sea,
And gave our world her mate beyond the brine,
Was nurtured, whilst an infant, at thy knee?
All things must perish—all but things divine.
Flowers, and the stars, and Virtue; these alone,
The self-subsisting shapes, or self-renewing,
Survive. All else are sentenced. Wisest were
That builder who should plan with strictest care
Ere yet the wood was felled or hewn the stone,
The aspect only of his pile in ruin!
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |