Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter

 These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry 
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; 
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome 
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. 

And cracking frieze and rotten metope 
Express, as though they were an open tome 
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; 
"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!" 

And yet within these ruins' very shade 
The singing workmen shape and set and join 
Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin 
With no apparent sense that years abrade, 
Though each rent wall their feeble works invade 
Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

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