 | Collected poems of Thomas Hardy |  |
ROME: BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
(April 1887)
These umbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.
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And cracking frieze and rotten metope
Express, as though they were an open tome
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;
“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”
Express, as though they were an open tome
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;
“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”
And yet within these ruins' very shade
The singing workmen shape and set and join
Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin
With no apparent sense that years abrade,
Though each rent wall their feeble works invade
Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.
The singing workmen shape and set and join
Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin
With no apparent sense that years abrade,
Though each rent wall their feeble works invade
Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.
| Collected poems of Thomas Hardy | |