These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry <br />Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; <br />Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome <br />Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. <br /> <br />And cracking frieze and rotten metope <br />Express, as though they were an open tome <br />Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; <br />"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!" <br /> <br />And yet within these ruins' very shade <br />The singing workmen shape and set and join <br />Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin <br />With no apparent sense that years abrade, <br />Though each rent wall their feeble works invade <br />Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rome-building-a-new-street-in-the-ancient-quarte-2/
