Classic Poem

'M ID all earth's mighty builders,
That ancient builder, Time,
Laughs at the art that crumbles
And the airy arts of rhyme.

But the story of godlike passion,
The mighty hate or desire,
Lives, when the hand that penned it
Is ruin with Sidon and Tyre.

Greater than all earth's temples,
Glories of art's high goal,
Is the mystical, magical temple
That God built for the soul.

Not in a day or hour,
Not in a thousand years,
He hath fashioned, for love to dwell in,
A temple of prayers and tears.

'Tis the dream and not the deed
That doth, eternal, endure;
The spirit, and not the form,
That makes earth's literature.