LORD CAESAR, when you sternly wrote The story of your grim campaigns, And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float Above the burning plains, Amid the impenetrable wood, Amid the camp's incessant hum, At eve, beside the tumbling flood In high Avaricum, You little recked, imperious head, When shrilled your shattering trumpet's noise, Your frigid sections would be read By bright-eyed English boys. Ah me! who penetrates to-day The secret of your deep designs? Your sovereign visions, as you lay Amid the sleeping lines? The Mantuan singer pleading stands; From century to century He leans and reaches wistful hands, And cannot bear to die. But you are silent, secret, proud, No smile upon your haggard face, As when you eyed the murderous crowd Beside the statue's base. I marvel: that Titanic heart Beats strongly through the arid page, And we, self-conscious sons of art, In this bewildering age, Like dizzy revellers stumbling out Upon the pure and peaceful night, Are sobered into troubled doubt, As swims across our sight The ray of that sequestered sun, Far in the illimitable blue, -- The dream of all you left undone, Of all you dared to do. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PORTRAIT OF ONE DEAD by CONRAD AIKEN SEVEN TWILIGHTS: 6 by CONRAD AIKEN WHITE NOCTURNE by CONRAD AIKEN SMALL COUNTRIES by JAMES GALVIN UTOPIA by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON FREE FANTASIA ON JAPANESE THEMES by AMY LOWELL SURFACES AND MASKS; 12 by CLARENCE MAJOR |