V

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws What it at first as casually did make, Say what amount of ages it will take With tardy rare concurrences of laws, And subtle multiplicities of cause, The thing they once had made us to remake; May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake, E’en after utmost interval of pause, What revolutions must have passed, before The great celestial cycles shall restore The starry sign whose present hour is gone; What worse than dubious chances interpose, With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose The skiey picture we had gazed upon.