Canto LXXIV
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,And in a moment set thy faceWhere all the starry heavens of spaceAre sharpen’d to a needle’s end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’The secular abyss to come,And lo, thy deepest lays are dumbBefore the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that wokeThe darkness of our planet, last,Thine own shall wither in the vast,Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowersWith fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;And what are they when these remainThe ruin’d shells of hollow towers?