The Witness of the Dust

Voices are crying from the dust of Tyre,
From Baalbec and the stones of Babylon—
“We raised our pillars upon Self-Desire,
And perished from the large gaze of the sun.”

Eternity was on the pyramid,
And immortality on Greece and Rome;
But in them all the ancient Traitor hid,
And so they tottered like unstable foam.

There was no substance in their soaring hopes:
The voice of Thebes is now a desert cry;
A spider bars the road with filmy ropes,
Where once the feet of Carthage thundered by.

A bittern booms where once fair Helen laughed;
A thistle nods where once the Forum poured;
A lizard lifts and listens on a shaft,
Where once of old the Colosseum roared.

No house can stand, no kingdom can endure
Built on the crumbling rock of Self-Desire:
Nothing is Living Stone, nothing is sure,
That is not whitened in the Social Fire.