Symbols and Types were mould’ring in the damp,
Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.
“Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe,
Were character’d on tablets Time had swept;
And deep were half their letters hid below
The thick small dust of those they once had wept.
“No hand was here to wipe the dust away,
No reader of the writing traced beneath;
No spirit sitting by its form of clay;
No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.