THE World is older than our earliest dates;
All thoughts, all feelings, all desires, all fates,
Were known and tested, long ere Adam's crime
Set the keen sword of flame at Eden-gates!
Billions of years on billions more have fled,
Since first love's kiss a maiden cheek turned red;
Since the first mother nursed her innocent babe--
The first wild mourner wept above his dead.
These ancient clods our vagrant feet displace,
May once have held the loftiest soul of grace;
This dateless dust that dims our garden flowers,
May once have smiled--a beauteous woman's face!
Older than all man's wisdom and his dreams,
Older than all which is, than all which seems,
Our world rolls on, where wrapped in cloud-like fire,
Phantasmal, pale, her awful death-morn gleams!
