Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter (April, 1887)

Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)



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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
85

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBA XBBA CDDCCD
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 597
Words 101
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 6

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, was not a Scottish Minister, not a Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland nor a Professor of Eccesiastical History at Edinburgh University. more…

All Thomas Hardy poems | Thomas Hardy Books

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