At Ephesus

"Great is Diana!" Ah, the mockery
It seems to-day, the old Ephesian cry!
Beholding what a waste the highways be,
And how downthrown the mighty temples lie.

On shattered columns build the storks their nests;
Stealthy as fate the slinking jackals prowl;
Where poured the plaudits at the actor's jests
In ghostly irony declaims the owl.

The silt of centuries chokes the harborage;
And where the pharos beaconed from the height,
Guide to great galleys, weighed with outland wage,
Now broods, unchallenged, immemorial night.

Nothing the vision rests upon reveals
The temporal grandeur that once here had birth;
And, gazing on the desolate scene, one feels
How mutable are all the things of earth.