He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear 380 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 384

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.

The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb,

390

And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 435

And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

441