Forgotten bloom that years ago was buried, But disentombed today beholds the light, How many a passenger has Charon ferried Since thy departure to the shores of Night. No more the charge of the o'er-brooding azure, No more the joy of human or of brute, Like Ovid banished at a despot's pleasure, But, unlike his, thy desolation mute. The feet that ran for thee have ceased their running; The cheeks that rivalled thee have lost their glow; The hand that wrought thy wrong forgot her cunning, With the sore sorrow of it, long ago. Yet hast thou choice companions, gentle flower, Cut off like thee, and sepulchered in bloom; The Roman language, in its ripened power, Is lying, trance-like, in this storied gloom. Garlands of Horace's measures hang around thee; The verse of Virgil twines about thy bier; The spell of Livy's history hath bound thee; The majesty of Cicero is here. No voice forbad thy taking off untimely, Fate cancels not nor alters his decrees; Yet who denies that one has fared sublimely Who shares the kingly company of these? As from the cities sinking in their glory, But rising, life-like, after many a day, There comes the lesson from thy silent story That death not causes but prevents decay. A truth divine thy petals are repeating, The formula for crazed ambition's cure— The lives we save and guard are only fleeting, The lives we sacrifice alone endure. Thy comrade-blossoms soon were sere and rotten; They perished when the frosts of autumn fell; Mourned for a day and then for aye forgotten; But thou remainest still their tale to tell. Flower, farewell! Thy tints again inurning, I leave thee with thy bright, immortal peers; Thou to their limbo passionless returning, I to a busy world of joy and tears. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HAIL TEESSIDE! by CECIL DAY LEWIS I'M GOING BACK TO SOMETHING by DAVID IGNATOW LET ME NOT LOSES MY DREAM by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON DOCTOR OF BILLIARDS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON THE MAD WOMAN'S SONG by KAREN SWENSON |