Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VISITOR (THE SHADE OF MARCUS AURELIUS GAZES ON MODERN ROME), by EDEN PHILLPOTTS


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THE VISITOR (THE SHADE OF MARCUS AURELIUS GAZES ON MODERN ROME), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Jupiter stator! Thou art dead indeed
Last Line: Throbbing to nobler music.
Subject(s): Marcus Aurelius (121-180); Rome, Italy


JUPITER STATOR! thou art dead indeed,
And with thee all the forms and states and shows
Of Rome have vanished. Whither art thou fled,
Thou city of the Caesars? Can it be
These splintered splendours of the past are all
Old Chronos hath not crunched? The Forum lies
Upon his plate, the fragments of a meal,
And round about there's nothing further left
But orts and shadows.
All the seven hills
Are buried deep in dwellings strangely piled
Against each other; temples, palaces
Alike have sunk, and toward the mountains one
Must lift his eyes to kindle memory.
Soracte standeth where it ever stood,
And still the Alban hills ascend to show
The footsteps of the morning; but for Rome
Morning hath drifted on eternal night,
And but a shrunken ant-heap marks the place
Where the world's mistress reigned.
Yet still it holds
That men lift up above the herd sometimes,
And dominate as they were wont to do.
I mark new mounted heroes spring aloft
Worthy of bronze, and lesser monitors
Have won to marble. Rome hath leaders yet;
And here's a sight familiar to my eyes:
Trajan's fair column; but the emperor
Doth crown his pile no more. Instead I see
A sombre shape upon the pillar perched—
A mighty form, and in his hands are keys.
Who was the key-bearer, and who is this
Thrust here upon my own memorial?
They set it up after that I had passed
From the great task of living. It was meant
To tell the cruel, painful wars we made,
On Marcomanni by the Danube's stream,
And standeth still to show what men could do
When Antonines wore purple. Art hath wrought
This masterpiece, and still I joy to see
Jupiter Pluvius, with outspread wing,
Shake from his dusky pinions and his hair
The fragrant thunder shower on my parched host.
A noble monument; but where am I?
And where is Faustina, my wondrous spouse,
Whose character—a tragic mystery,
Mixed by the gods for their own purpose—led
The woman to forget she was a queen?
'Tis no surpassing wonder thus to find
Her flitted hence; truly her consort's side
Irked her a little in life; but where am I?
What night-black, dark-robed sword-bearer is this,
That swung a blade for Rome, and now, it seems,
Usurps my pillar?
'Tis a verity
That oftentimes I thought and sometimes wrote,
When practising my little store of Greek,
My private mind upon the worth of fame.
'Tis true I scorned the windy shout of men,
And rated it but as the hollow howl
Of brumal tempest through a naked wood;
'Tis true the roar of multitudes to me
Spoke but the language of a sudden storm,
Or riotous march of mad, white-headed waves,
Panting along the indifferent feet of earth;
Yet Fate hath willed my pillar should outlast
Some flight of years; and I was counted more
Than this uplifted stone.
A man named Paul
Now darkles where aforetime they set me;
But whence was he and how served he the State
In such wise that his glory, like the sun,
Hath melted my brief taper from its place?

Shadow of high Olympus, shades of those
Celestial ones who reigned in human hearts,
And led the conquerors of all the earth,
Here's a wild jest for thoughtful ghosts to mark!
He was a Christian; yea, that stubborn folk
Who buzzed and troubled, like the nightly gnats
Bred of Campagna's marshes—even that cult
We whipped and hindered; they have won their day
And set their heroes on our pedestals!
Paul standeth for their conquest and their Christ,
A poet slain upon a Roman cross
In some far province of the troubled East
For telling truth before that it was ripe.
And I myself lived long enough to see
How truth grown ripe grows false. That biting thing
Is precious only in the tart and green,
For ripe and sweet to every mouth, 'tis rotten.

Now all our ruined state doth make a show
For Christians. So are the tables turned;
And where the beasts on Roman holidays
Set free their souls and reddened all the sands
Of yonder grass-grown space, to-day they thrive
And peep about our roofless palaces
And set our broken marbles in their aisles,
And patch our temples for a sort of lure
To draw the Nations. Even my own mild face,
Cut upon many a stone and sometime loved
By those I toiled for, doth lack-lustre stare,
With tinkered nose or mended brow or ear,
Upon the people; and far greater yet—
The images of long-forgotten gods
Throng the assemblies in their stony pomp
And gaze through marble lids upon the past,
Unconscious of the life that creeps about
Their art-created immortality.

Oh, Christ, thy hierarchs have used thee ill
To break a peaceful grave, defraud the dead
And turn thy human rede of love to man
Into a battle cry that drove in hate
And agony and long-drawn, moral death
Two thousand years of fooled humanity.
Yea, they have prostituted thee and raped
Thy virgin message till at last it stands
No more than slave to many infamies.
Twice thieves, from Gods and Cæsars they have stole:
The keys of heaven they have filched away
And given them to yonder fisherman;
While from the imperial forehead they have torn
Pontifex Maximus, our proudest star.
Now Pontifex is Cæsar, but no more
Is Cæsar Pontifex; and even as
They feigned their Christ ascended from the grave
And lived once more, so this our fallen state,—
Our Roman Empire that went down to death,—
Doth peep again to pose a little while
And cry out vain decretals to the wind,
And linger in this pit of pestilence
Men call the Papacy. An ancient cock
Yet struts his narrow dunghill up and down,
And shaketh moulting wings and croweth shrill,
Well knowing that his tyrant voice hath sunk
To withered pipe and his blood-rusted spurs
Have fallen off for ever. Oh, thou Christ,
In the dark shadow of thy gallows tree
They've battened and grown fat and flourished long
On persecuted reason. They have stilled
The solemn heart-beat of philosophy,
And trampled on the golden time and flung
Truth to the lions; they have turned the world
From her rejoicing journey; they have fouled
The highest places of man's intellect
With their base excrement of forged lies;
They have made fast their adamant doors, and laughed
At ruination as it swept to drown
The best that men had fought for until now.

So all that Hellas taught the world's forgot!
Ye shadows of the mightiest, shades of those
Who led my youth, and lifted my young soul
To purity and patience, wake and gaze.
Behold how time hath been revenged on us!
And time anon will be revenged again,
Since vengeance only doth belong to time;
And 'tis most sure that, as the breath expired
From vanished myths, so it must also leave
This dwindling falsehood when the sun shall rise.
Already a stark light doth shiver cold
Above its slumber; deep uneasiness
Hath set a troubled hand upon its eyes;
For light is roaming on the mountains—light
That slays the owl-eyed haunters of the dusk,
And drives to den the children of the dark.

Habet! The Christian has it; Dawn's white steel
Is at his bosom; it shall be with him
As where yon stone barbarian droops and sinks,
And fills his hollow shield with falling blood.
So this old faith must die, and make an end
Less lovely than the Gaul's.
Some flight of years
And the inevitable, tireless hand
Gropes and grips fast, and draws it gently down—
Down into Hades, where the earlier gods,
Their duty done, still sit on ghostly thrones,
And show the wondrous picture of man's mind
In its beginnings and its worshippings,
Its strivings, strugglings by the endless road
Upward and onward. Creeds are still the signs
That mark our human path; and this shall stand,
To point into that fateful labyrinth
Where man hath wasted precious centuries,
And barred the way of living liberty
His leaders trod before the Christian came.
Fear not, thou fleeting faith; time promises
Thee euthanasia; they who watch thy end
Will add no pang thereto. Not on thy lap
Shall they be nurtured; not from thy shrunk breast
May the clean spirits of mankind to come
Drink life. Upon thy final citadels
The hail of truth is falling; earthly power
Has vanished from thee, and thy cob-webbed orb
And sceptre soon must drop. Some span of years
Shall see thee follow the Olympians;
Whereon thy domes and soaring palaces
Will take their turn as show, and nevermore
Shall man within thy holy places kneel.

Keep thou my pillar, Paul; I grudge it not,
Thou lion-hearted spirit. Stand thou there
Until old Chronos flits along his way
To the next perch; and then upon this wreck
I'll gaze again to see what's doing more,
When Liberty shall welcome other men,
Sweep present hopes and values off the earth
And set the heartstrings of posterity
Throbbing to nobler music.





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