Canto LXXIV

Take wings of fancy, and ascend,

      And in a moment set thy face

      Where all the starry heavens of space

Are sharpen'd to a needle's end;

Take wings of foresight; lighten thro'

      The secular abyss to come,

      And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb

Before the mouldering of a yew;

And if the matin songs, that woke

      The 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 bowers

      With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;

      And what are they when these remain

The ruin'd shells of hollow towers?