Complete from glowing towers to golden base, Without the lineage of toil it stood: A crystal city fashioned out of space, So calm and holy in its Sabbath mood, It might constrain belief that any time The altars would irradiate their fires, And any moment now would start the chime Of matins from the massed Cathedral spires. Then this marmoreal structure of the dawn, Built as by fiat of Apocalypse, Was with the instancy of vision gone; Nor did it die through shadow of eclipse, Through clouds and vulgar effigies of night, But through the darker irony of light.