Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SIC TRANSIT...., by MICHAEL T. H. SADLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SIC TRANSIT...., by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The night is closing in with rain
Last Line: To mourn the death of mantua.
Subject(s): Oxford University


THE night is closing in with rain
And long, low clouds droop drowsily
Above the meadows by the way.
Pale spaces of grey water lie
Like sightless eyes along the plain;
The rushes turn from green to grey;
But through the debris of the day
I hear no sound from Mantua.

The ruined causeway to the town
Runs past a little gatehouse, past
A crumbling arch of moss-flecked stone
To the huge castle, blind and vast,
Remembering as it broods alone
How Lombards saw Gonzaga frown
In the great days of their renown,
The mighty days of Mantua.

When horsemen clattered in the square
And every loggia was gay
With beauty and the glint of war;
When music trembled on the air
And wandering poets from afar
Sang songs of love and proud array,
And the rich blue Italian day
Hung languid over Mantua.

Behind the fortress and its pride
The present lies -- a horrid maze
Of empty echoing courts. The grass
Among the cobbles far and wide
Is littered with old boots -- a mass
Of garbage where in ancient days
Men flashed defiance through the haze
Across the marsh from Mantua.

The gleaming splendour is no more;
Blind revolution has subdued
The careless brilliance. In its place
A strangled modern township, nude
Amid the tattered pomp of yore,
Tries to forget in pride of race
The triumphs of its vanished grace
-- Poor, weary, ghost of Mantua.

And all the palaces are dead,
And all the churches cold and stark,
And in the streets men hurry by
And stumble in the clammy dark.
With all the glory, life has fled
And left the fevered shell to die;
The hateful marsh remain -- and I --
To mourn the death of Mantua.





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