WHEN, as of old in Rome's imperial world, Fair, conquered gods are from their temples hurled, And some rude, vehement Peter puts to flight Some serene Phoebus, lord of lore and light; In wastes and wilds, by fount and caverned hill, Secretly, furtively, are worshipped still, With the sad zeal of vainly pious knees, The ancient, the deposed divinities, Heaven's outcasts, the great exiles of the sky, Once mighty to do all things, save to die. So, though in Kingdoms of the Lyre to-day I see the new faiths push the old away -- See the hot hierophants of each strange shrine Offer oblation to all gods but mine -- Yet, mid a revel of change, unchanged I turn To the lorn haunts where older altars burn, And seek, companioned by the lessening few Whose faith is as mine own, the gods I knew; Nor ever doubt, that among wondering men These deathless will in triumph come again, As sure as the droop'd year's remounting curve, And reign anew, when I no more shall serve. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE INDIAN EMPEROR: SONG by JOHN DRYDEN NEW ENGLAND'S DEAD! by ISAAC MCLELLAN JR. CARMEN BELLICOSUM by GUY HUMPHREYS MCMASTER ON THE HOME GUARDS; WHO PERISHED ... LEXINGTON, MISSOURI by HERMAN MELVILLE CHRISTMAS, 1917 by BRENT DOW ALLINSON |