Poems of the Past and the Present | Page 7

by Strauss:?It stirred me as I stood, in Caesar's house,?Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,
And blended pulsing life with lives long done,?Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.
ROME?BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER?(April, 1887)
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.
ROME?THE VATICAN--SALA DELLE MUSE?(1887)
I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,?And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,?And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,?Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.
She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,?But each and the whole--an essence of all the Nine;?With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,?A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.
"Regarded so long, we render thee sad?" said she.?"Not you," sighed I, "but my own inconstancy!?I worship each and each; in the morning one,?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.?June 27, 1897?(The 110th anniversary 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?Thou watch'dst each night the planets lift and lower;?Thou gleam'dst to Joshua's pausing sun and moon,?And brav'dst the tokening sky when Caesar's power?Approached its bloody end: yea, saw'st that Noon?When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.
THE BRIDGE OF LODI {2}?(Spring, 1887)
I
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,?And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
Brought a strange delight to me.
II
In the battle-breathing jingle
Of its forward-footing tune?I could see the armies mingle,
And the columns cleft and hewn
III
On that far-famed spot by Lodi
Where Napoleon clove his way?To his fame, when like a god he
Bent the nations to his sway.
IV
Hence the tune came capering to me
While I traced the Rhone and Po;?Nor could Milan's Marvel woo me
From the spot englamoured so.
V
And to-day, sunlit and smiling,
Here I stand