Collected poems of Herman Melville | ||
IN THE HALL OF MARBLES
(LINES RECALLED FROM A DESTROYED POEM)
If genius, turned to sordid endsYe count to glory lost,
How with mankind that flouts the aims
Time's Attic years engrossed?
389
Richer and narrower, age's way?
But, primal fervors all displaced
Our arts but serve the clay.
This plaint the sibyls unconsoled renew:
Man fell from Eden, fall from Athens too.
Collected poems of Herman Melville | ||