Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,
By thousands swept into the arms of Death.
I saw the old world’s white and wave-swept bones, 25
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 scattered round, confused, amid the dead; 30
Symbols and Types were mouldering in the damp,
Their shapes were waning, and their meaning fled.