“I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,
Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath;
Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,
Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.
“I saw the old world’s white and wave-swept bones
A giant heap of creatures that had been;
Far and confused the broken skeletons
Lay strewn beyond mine eye’s remotest ken.
“Death’s various shrines—the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp—
Were scatter’d round, confused, amid the dead;