The architects are secret men

Who shape their thought with careful pen.

Their lines are lifted like a cry

In tall translation toward the sky.

They look aloft, they look away,

And think of words they never say,

How once their grandsire stopped the clock

And stayed to watch the princess sleep,

And taught his grandsons how to lock

Her flying beauty in a steep

Enchanted house of stone in air,

High in the sunlight, bright and bare.

All loveliness that is not proud,

But hurries with the murmuring crowd

Along the streets of earth, is spent,

And no one cares for what it went.

It lies too shallow, falls too thin,

To find the moon's reflection in.

The architects, with infinite grace,

Set steel and stone in empty space,

And have, since building first began,

Had gravity for serving-man,

To help them raise and hold in place,

Up in the rain and running air,

A tower, and keep the princess there.

And there in beauty till she wakes,

Until the deep foundation shakes

With Time, who comes to set her free,

She sleeps. When ruin has begun,

With Time's slow fury at the walls,

The architects, before it falls

And Time's disastrous work is done,

Will build near by, still hopefully,

Another and a higher one.