Soliloquy
August and laurelled have been content to speak for an age, and the ages that follow
Respect them for that pious fidelity;
But you have disfeatured time for timelessness.
They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to dream of, rose-marble-fingered
Women shed light down the great lines;
But you have invoked the slime in the skull,
The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods like racial dreams, the woman’s desire,
The man’s fear, the hawk-faced prophet’s; but nothing
Human seems happy at the feet of yours.
Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in gray old years in the evening leaning
Over the gray stones of the tower-top,
You shall be called heartless and blind;
And watch new time answer old thought, not a face strange nor a pain astonishing;
But you living be laired in the rock
That sheds pleasure and pain like hailstones.
