Or stammering an answer in the tongue's cold fashion—
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?
Haply on strange roads I shall be, the moorland's peace around me;
Or counting up a fortune to which Destiny hath bound me;
Or—Vanity of Vanities—the honey of the Fair;
Or a greybeard, lost to memory, on the cobbles in my chair—
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?
The drummers will be drumming; the fiddlers at their thrumming;
Nuns at their beads; the mummers at their mumming;
Heaven's solemn Seraph stoopt weary o'er his summing;