A man is on his way across the fields to a turret where he is to meet
the girl he loves. As he walks through the solitary pastures he mentally
recreates the powerful life and varied interests of the city which,
tradition has it, once occupied this site, and he seems to be absorbed
in a melancholy recognition of the evanescence of human glory. The girl
is not mentioned till stanza 5. Does the emphasis on the scenery and its
historic associations unduly minimize the love element of the poem? Or
is the whole picture of vanished joy and woe, pride and defeat, but a
background against which stands out more clearly the rapture of the
meeting in the ruined turret?
80. _Earth's returns._ This phrase refers to the ruins which are all
that now remains of the centuries of folly, noise, and sin. "Them" in l.
81 refers apparently to the "fighters" and the others of the first part
of the stanza.