These Songs Will Perish

These songs will perish like the shapes of air— The singer and the songs die out forever; But star-eyed Truth (greater than song or singer) Sweeps hurrying on: far off she sees a gleam Upon a peak. She cried to man of old To build the enduring, glad Fraternal State— Cries yet through all the ruins of the world— Through Karnack, through the stones of Babylon— Cries for a moment through these fading songs.

On wingèd feet, a form of fadeless youth, She goes to meet the coming centuries, And, hurrying, snatches up some human reed, Blows through it once her terror-bearing note, And breaks and throws away. It is enough If we can be a bugle at her lips, To scatter her contagion on mankind.