What metaphors are used in Beware of Ruins by A. D. Hope?

Death is a metaphor in the poem. This poem is not about literal death, but death in a figurative sense: the death of the past in the present and the present in the past. The narrator cautions us that while we might want to imaginatively follow the beckoning arm of the white-as-death statue into a "love restored," and imaginatively remake the scummy pool into a beautiful fountain, we must be careful because the past is dead to us.