How on solemn fields of space
Black with amplitude sublime
From the starry flowers of time;
How the centuries replace
Lifeless worlds with worlds of green,
Scenes of rock with forest scene;
How the city, proud yet mean,
For whose sake a wildwood burned
In its turn at last despairs,
Falls before the horde of years,
All this is but thought returned,
This that we have fixed we find ...
Till on proof by proof destroyed,
On the waste-mounds of the mind,
Soul's vague lily scents the void.
~Elizabeth Daryush (1887-1977)
