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There came a slope that slowly downward sank; It slipped towards a stumbling grey descent. The dim-heart marvel of the ideal was lost; Its crowding wonder of bright delicate dreams And vague half-limned sublimities she had left: Thought fell towards lower levels; hard and tense It passioned for some crude reality. The twilight floated still but changed its hues And heavily swathed a less delightful dream; It settled in tired masses on the air; Its symbol colours tuned with duller reds And almost seemed a lurid mist of day. A straining taut and dire besieged her heart; Heavy her sense grew with a dangerous load, And sadder, greater sounds were in her ears, And through stern breakings of the lambent glare Her vision caught a hurry of driving plains And cloudy mountains and wide tawny streams, And cities climbed in minarets and towers Towards an unavailing changeless sky: Long quays and ghauts and harbours white with sails Challenged her sight awhile and then were gone. Amidst them travailed toiling multitudes In ever shifting perishable groups, A foiled cinema of lit shadowy shapes Enveloped in the grey mantle of a dream. Imagining meanings in life's heavy drift, They trusted in the uncertain environment And waited for death to change their spirit's scene. A savage din of labour and a tramp Of armoured life and the monotonous hum 
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