No one would dream that this quiet plain was once the site of a
great city, for no proofs remain: we have to take the word of the
archaeologists for it. Some day a Japanese shepherd may pasture his
sheep on Manhattan Island.
After a poetic discourse on the text _Sic transit gloria mundi_--the
love motive is suddenly introduced in the fifth stanza; and now the
contrast changes, and becomes a comparison between the ephemeral
nature of civilisation and the permanent fact of Love. At the exact
spot where the grandstand formerly stood at the finish of the
horse-race, where the King, surrounded by courtiers, watched the
whirling chariots, now remains motionless, breathless, a
yellow-haired girl. The proud King's eyes looked over the stadium
and beheld the domes and pinnacles of his city, the last word of
civilisation; the girl's eager eyes look over the silent plain
searching for the coming of her lover. And Browning would have us
believe that this latter fact is far more important historically
than the former.
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