Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime.
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.”
All this is gone. The only wealth of the past which has survived is such as Christ referred to. “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” The ideas and the literature which enshrined them alone remain. Not the manuscripts. They are gone, as though God would show in the most vivid way His scorn of the visible and earth’s “real.” Not one original page of Plato exists. But Plato’s mind is here still. The kings are gone. But Isaiah and Jeremiah, the men of the inward resources, spokesmen and ministers of the invisible life, abide.
“The tumult and the shouting dies
The captains and the kings depart