The Goal

All your wonderful inventions,          All your houses vast and tall,     All your great gun-fronted vessels,          Every fort and every wall,     With the passing of the ages,          They shall pass and they shall fall.     As you sit among the idols          That your avarice gave birth,     As you count the hoarded treasures          That you think of priceless worth,     Time is digging tombs to hide them          In the bosom of the earth.     There shall come a great convulsion          Or a rushing tidal wave,     Or a sound of mighty thunders          From a subterranean cave,     And a boasting world's possessions          Shall be buried in one grave.     From the Centuries of Silence          We are bringing back again     Buried vase and bust and column          And the gods they worshipped then,     In the strange unmentioned cities          Built by prehistoric men.     Did they steal, and lie, and slaughter?          Did they steep their souls in shame?     Did they sell eternal virtues          Just to win a passing fame?     Did they give the gold of honour          For the tinsel of a name?     We are hurrying all together          Toward the silence and the night;     There is nothing worth the seeking          But the sun-kissed moral height -     There is nothing worth the doing          But the doing of the RIGHT.