Classic Poem

The seven sleepers ere they left
the light and colour of the earth
the seven sleepers they did cry
(banishing their final fears):

" Beauty will not ever fade.
To our cavern we retire
doom'd to sleep ten thousand years.
Roll the rock across the gap.

Then forget us; we are quiet:
stiff and cold our bodies lie;
Earth itself shall stir ere we
visit Earth's mortality.

Beauty when we wake will be
a solitude on land and sea."