LXXVI.
             
        Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
            And in a moment set thy face
            Where all the starry heavens of space
        Are sharpen’d to a needle’s end;

        Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’
            The secular abyss to come,
            And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
        Before the mouldering of a yew;

        And if the matin songs, that woke
            The darkness of our planet, last,
            Thine own shall wither in the vast,
        Ere half the lifetime of an oak.

        Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
            With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
            And what are they when these remain
        The ruin’d shells of hollow towers?