Poems of the Past and the Present

And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

“To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?”
– “Be not perturbed,” said she.  “Though apart in fame,
As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

– “But my loves go further – to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,
The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim —
Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!”
– “Nay, wight, thou sway’st not.  These are but phases of one;

“And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,
One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be —
Extern to thee nothing.  Grieve not, nor thyself becall,
Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!”

ROME

AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS

NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS

(1887)

Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? —
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word
Of anything he did;
For me he is a man who died and was interred
To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest
Not with its first design,
Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest
Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,
Slew, breathed out threatening;
I know not.  This I know: in death all silently
He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet
With marble finger high
To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,
Those matchless singers lie.

– Say, then, he lived and died
That stones which bear his name
Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;
It is an ample fame.

LAUSANNE

IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN: 11–12 P.M

June27, 1897

(The 110thanniversary of the completion of the “Decline and Fall” at the same hour and place)

A spirit seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed,
With “It is finished!”  And at the alley’s end
He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;
And, as from earth, comes speech – small, muted, yet composed.

“How fares the Truth now? – Ill?
– Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

“Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled:
‘Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?”

ZERMATT

TO THE MATTERHORN

(June-July, 1897)

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done,
And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight
To that day’s tragic feat of manly might,
As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon