These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry

Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome;

Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome

Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope

Express, as though they were an open tome

Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;

“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”

And yet within these ruins’ very shade

The singing workmen shape and set and join

Their frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoin

With no apparent sense that years abrade,

Though each rent wall their feeble works invade

Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.