When this young Land has reached its wrinkled prime, And we are gone and all our songs are done, And naught is left unchanged beneath the sun, What other singers shall the womb of Time Bring forth to reap the sunny slopes of rhyme? For surely till the thread of life be spun The world shall not lack poets, though but one Make lonely music like a vesper chime Above the heedless turmoil of the street. What new strange voices shall be given to these, What richer accents of melodious breath? Yet shall they, baffled, lie at Nature's feet Searching the volume of her mysteries, And vainly question the fixed eyes of Death.