Poems of the Past and the Present | Page 8

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 upon the scene,
With its saffron walls, dun tiling,
And its meads of maiden green,
VI
Even as when the trackway thundered
With the charge of grenadiers,
And the blood of forty hundred
Splashed its parapets and piers . . .
VII
Any ancient crone I'd toady
Like a lass in young-eyed prime,
Could she tell some tale of Lodi
At that moving mighty time.

VIII
So, I ask the wives of Lodi
For traditions of that day;
But alas! not anybody
Seems to know of such a fray.
IX
And they heed but transitory
Marketings in cheese and meat,
Till I judge that Lodi's story
Is extinct in Lodi's street.
X
Yet while here and there they thrid them
In their zest to sell and buy,
Let me sit me down amid them
And behold those thousands die . . .
XI
0. Not a creature cares in Lodi How Napoleon swept each arch, Or
where up and downward trod he,
0. Or for his memorial March!
XII
So that wherefore should I be here,
Watching Adda lip the lea,
When the whole romance to see here
Is the dream I bring with me?
XIII

And why sing "The Bridge of Lodi"
As I sit thereon and swing,
When none shows by smile or nod he
Guesses why or what I sing? . . .
XIV
Since all Lodi, low and head ones,
Seem to pass that story by,
It may be the Lodi-bred ones
Rate it truly, and not I.
XV
Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,
Is thy claim to glory gone?
Must I pipe a palinody,
Or be silent thereupon?
XVI
And if here, from strand to steeple,
Be no stone to fame the fight,
Must I say the Lodi people
Are but viewing crime aright?
XVII
Nay; I'll sing "The Bridge of Lodi" -
That long-loved, romantic thing,
Though none show by smile or nod
he
Guesses why and what I sing!

ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES
I
My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,

I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;

Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of
human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the
centuried years.
II
For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with
dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the
lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And
their experience count as mine.
THE MOTHER MOURNS
When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,
I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly
Came wheeling around me
Those phantoms obscure and insistent
That shadows