Classic Poem

Darkly , as by some gloomèd mirror glassed,
Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled regality of his rent robe,
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;

Till the world seems a world of husks and bones
Where sightless seers and immortals dead,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Invincible armies long since vanquishèd,
And powerless potentates and foolish sages
Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.