Part 19 (1/2)

Once there were merry days in Troy, Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals, The pa.s.sing chariots did annoy The sunning housewives at their wheels.

And many a lovely Trojan maid Set Trojan lads to lovely things; The game of life was n.o.bly played, They played the game like Queens and Kings.

So that, when Troy had greatly pa.s.sed In one red roaring fiery coal, The courts the Grecians overcast Became a city in the soul.

In some green island of the sea, Where now the shadowy coral grows In pride and pomp and empery The courts of old Atlantis rose.

In many a glittering house of gla.s.s The Atlanteans wandered there; The paleness of their faces was Like ivory, so pale they were.

And hushed they were, no noise of words In those bright cities ever rang; Only their thoughts, like golden birds, About their chambers thrilled and sang.

They knew all wisdom, for they knew The souls of those Egyptian Kings Who learned, in ancient Babilu, The beauty of immortal things.

They knew all beauty--when they thought The air chimed like a stricken lyre, The elemental birds were wrought, The golden birds became a fire.

And straight to busy camps and marts The singing flames were swiftly gone; The trembling leaves of human hearts Hid boughs for them to perch upon.

And men in desert places, men Abandoned, broken, sick with fears, Rose singing, swung their swords agen, And laughed and died among the spears.

The green and greedy seas have drowned That city's glittering walls and towers, Her sunken minarets are crowned With red and russet water-flowers.

In towers and rooms and golden courts The shadowy coral lifts her sprays; The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts, The shark doth haunt her hidden ways.

But, at the falling of the tide, The golden birds still sing and gleam, The Atlanteans have not died, Immortal things still give us dream.

The dream that fires man's heart to make, To build, to do, to sing or say A beauty Death can never take, An Adam from the crumbled clay.

BORN FOR NOUGHT ELSE

Born for nought else, for nothing but for this, To watch the soft blood throbbing in her throat, To think how comely sweet her body is, And learn the poem of her face by rote.

Born for nought else but to attempt a rhyme That shall describe her womanhood aright, And make her holy to the end of Time, And be my soul's acquittal in G.o.d's sight.

Born for nought else but to expressly mark The music of her dear delicious ways; Born but to perish meanly in the dark, Yet born to be the man to sing her praise.

Born for nought else: there is a spirit tells My lot's a King's, being born for nothing else.

TEWKESBURY ROAD

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where, Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why; Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air, Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.