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 gleamUpon a peak. She cried to man of oldTo 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,And hurrying, snatches up some human reed,Blows through it once her terror-bearing note,And breaks and throws away. It is enoughIf we can be a bugle at her lips,To scatter her contagion on mankind.