Page:The Man with the Hoe, Markham, 1900.djvu/141



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 Karnak, 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, 113