Classic Poem

The presence of perpetual change
Is ever on the earth;
To-day is only as the soil
That gives to-morrow birth.

Where stood the tower there grows the weed;
Where stood the weed the tower:
No present hour its likeness leaves
To any future hour.

Of each imperial city built
Far on the eastern plains,
A desert waste of tomb and sand
Is all that now remains.

Our own fair city filled with life,
Has yet a future day,
When power, and might, and majesty,
Will yet have passed away.