If they whose brick-built terraces decay
Beneath the mountainous waste of Babylon,
Could leave their dusty graves, to gaze upon
This vale’s gigantic piers of rosy clay;
And with them stood the men who through the day
Of Baalbec’s heat gave up their flesh and bone,
Yet in the quarry left the fourth great stone,
The wide earth’s marvel and their own dismay,—
How would they sigh to think their sweat was given
To magnify a crazed, ambitious king,
Or make a world of brutish wonder stare,—
While these, with honest hands for bread have striven,
To build their arch of triumph high in air,
And speed the cars of peace on swifter wing.
(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 136)