Solomon! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind.
Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind,
Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind.

Man! canst thou build upon aught in the pride of thy mind?
Wisdom will teach thee that nothing can tarry behind;
Though there be thousand bright actions embalmed and enshrined,
Myriads and millions of brighter are snow in the wind.

Solomon! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind.
Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
All that the genius of Man hath achieved and designed
Waits for its hour to be dealt with as dust by the wind.

Pity thou, reader! the madness of poor Humankind,
Raving of Knowledge,—and Satan so busy to blind!
Raving of Glory,—like me,—for the garlands I bind
(Garlands of song) are but gathered, and—strewn in the wind!

Shakespeare is dust, and will not come
To question from his Avon tomb,
And Socrates and Shelley keep
An Attic and Italian sleep.

They will not see us, nor again
Shall indignation light the brain
Where Lincoln on his woodland height
Tells out the spring and winter night.

They see not. But, O Christians, who
Throng Holborn and Fifth Avenue,
May you not meet, in spite of death,
A traveler from Nazareth?

Walls cannot save the cities from their fate;
Fire, disease, the weight
Of arms, Babylon, Athens or Jerusalem—
London, New York will follow them.
Each city springs to its appointed hour,
Buds, blossoms like a flower,
But cannot stand or stay
When the dull autumn of decay
Arrives.

Only the city set upon a hill
Is tainted not with ill.
The gates of gold, the stairs of amethyst
Warp not with time, nor list
In any wind. The arches of untarnished glass
Tower above the centuries that pass,
Lay siege to all the stories made of stone;
The unbuilt city of our dream alone
Endures.

Love’s perpendicular high wall
Becomes a rod by which the bastions fall
Which measure not, nor span,
The unguessed compass of the mind of man.
The river of life twists backward every street
That seeks to hold the feet
Of the star-wandering human race
That yet has found no final resting place
On earth.

[Si monumentum requiris, circumspice]

Old London’s time-encrusted walls
   Are but the work of human hands.
What man has fashioned for us falls;
   What God has breathed into us stands.

What if the splendour of the past
   Is shattered into dust, we raise
A monument that shall outlast
   Even the Abbey’s span of days.

On broken homes we set our feet
   And raise proud heads that all may see,
Immortal in each little street,
   The soul in its integrity.

[“On returning to his house in London after an air raid Mr. Milne found only the steps left. Sitting on them he wrote the above lines.”]

And have the bright immensities
   Received our risen Lord
Where light-years frame the Pleiades
   And point Orion’s sword?

Do flaming suns His footsteps trace
   Through corridors sublime,
The Lord of interstellar space
   And Conqueror of time?

The heaven that hides Him from our sight
   Knows neither near nor far:
An altar candle sheds its light
   As surely as a star;

And where His loving people meet
   To share the gift divine,
There stands He with unhurrying feet,
   There heavenly splendors shine.

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 400
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee