George Sylvester Viereck, in “Prisoners of Song,” has these suggestive
lines on the immortality of the song:
With rumbling thunder and discordance hideous
The gods and stars shall tumble from the sky,
But beauty’s curve enmarbled lives in Phidias,
And Homer’s numbers can not die.
And when the land is perished, yea,
When life forsakes us and the rust
Has eaten bard and roundelay,
Still from the silence of the dust
Shall rise the song of yesterday!
(3009)