The End of All

WANDERING along a waste
Where once a city stood,
I saw a ruined tomb,
And in that tomb an urn,—

A sacred funeral-urn,
Without a name or date,
And in its hollow depths
A little human dust!

Whose dust is this, I asked,
In this forgotten urn ?
And where this waste now lies
What city rose of old ?

None knows ; its name is lost;
It was, and is no more :
Gone like a wind that blew
A thousand years ago!

Its melancholy end
Will be the end of all;
For, as it passed away,
The universe will pass !

Its sole memorial
Some ruined world, like ours ;
A solitary urn,
Full of the dust of men !