’Twas Love: and Time stood by, and said:
“Behold! a thousand spires
Speak gilded words from hearts as dead
As those old Druid fires.
But love lives on and leavens all
In Earth’s expanding range,
The height and depth, the rise and fall,
The first and last of Change.
“Kings pale and perish, dogmas die,
The world goes slowly on
To greet an all-unclouded sky,
To kiss a purer dawn.
Stript of the garb of mimic worth,
Freed from his brothers’ ban
And circumscribing creeds, steps forth
A newer, nobler man.
“’Twas thus God’s chosen race was bent
Beneath a tyrant yoke:
’Twas thus the hated chains were rent,
The conqueror’s sceptre broke.
Thus Babylon to Persia bowed,
Thus Persia bent to Greece,
Thus Greece gave place to Rome the proud,
The Goth broke Roman peace.”
These mighty stones, this giant ring
Give token of a day
That died, as dies a dreamt-of thing,
And passed in dust away,
Save these, for you—dear heart—and me
To gaze on, muse, and rhyme:
“Time conquers all, both bond and free,
But Love shall conquer Time!”
