Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
  The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
  Whose population which the earth grew over
  Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
  Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
  Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
  Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
  Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
  The anatomies of unknown wingèd things,
  And fishes which were isles of living scale,
  And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
  The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
  To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
  Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
  The jagged alligator, and the might
  Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
  Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
  And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
  Increased and multiplied like summer worms
  On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
  Wrapped deluge round it like a cloke, and they
  Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God,
  Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
  Be not! and like my words they were no more.