Page:The man against the sky; a book of poems.djvu/158

 Or, by the burrowing guile Of Time disintegrated and effaced, Like once-remembered mighty trees go down To ruin, of which by man may now be traced No part sufficient even to be rotten, And in the book of things that are forgotten Is entered as a thing not quite worth while. He may have been so great That satraps would have shivered at his frown, And all he prized alive may rule a state No larger than a grave that holds a clown; He may have been a master of his fate, And of his atoms,—ready as another In his emergence to exonerate His father and his mother; He may have been a captain of a host, Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies,