  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. Built on the crumbling rock of Self-Desire: Nothing is Living Stone, nothing is sure, That is not whitened in the Social Fire.
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