ODE TO SILENCE
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes.
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wedged
in marble,
Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,
And the inarticulate snow,
Leaving at last of her least signs and traces
None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished
from these places.
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