Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume II/Changes in London

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHANGES IN LONDON.

The presence of perpetual change
    Is ever on the earth;
To-day is only as the soil
    That gives to-morrow birth.

Where stood the tower, there grows the weed;
    Where stood the weed, the tower:
No present hour its likeness leaves
    To any future hour.

Of each imperial city built
    Far on the Eastern plains,
A desert waste of tomb and sand
    Is all that now remains.

Our own fair city filled with life,
    Has yet a future day,
When power, and might, and majesty,
    Will yet have passed away.

In Blanchard