The grand cortège of glory and youth is gone

flaunt standards, and the flood of brazen tone:

I alone linger, a regretful guest,

here where the hostelry has crumbled down,

emptied of warmth and life, and the little town

lies cold and ruin’d, all its bravery done,

wind-blown, wind-blown, where not even dust may rest.

No cymbal-clash warms the chill air: the way

lies stretch’d beneath a slanting afternoon,

the which no piled pyres of the slaughter’d sun,

no silver sheen of eve shall follow: Day,

ta’en at the throat and choked, in the huge slum

o’ the common world, shall fall across the coast,

yellow and bloodless, not a wound to boast.

But if this bare-blown waste refuse me home

and if the skies wither my vesper-flight,

‘twere well to creep, or ever livid night

wrap the disquiet earth in horror, back

where the old church stands on our morning’s track,

and in the iron-entrellis’d choir, among

rust tombs and blazons, where an isle of light

is bosom’d in the friendly gloom, devise

proud anthems in a long forgotten tongue:

so cozening youth’s despair o’er joy that dies.

 

1895