What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, To hazards whence no tears can win us; What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?...
These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. ...
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia's rich red mural show, Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, We gained Caligula's dissolving pile....
I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away, And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,...
That "Sacred to the Memory" Is clearly carven there I own, And all may think that on the stone The words have been inscribed by me In bare conventionality. ...
The kettle descants in a cozy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then at her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place;...
"Would it had been the man of our wish!" Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she In the wedding-dress the wife to be - "Then why were you so mollyish As not to insist on him for me!"...
"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,...
He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, A type of decayed gentility; And by some small signs he well can guess That she comes to him almost breakfastless. ...
"You see those mothers squabbling there?" Remarks the man of the cemetery. One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!' Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!' Another, 'How dare you move my flowers...
"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane To the house just left, whence a vixen voice Comes out with the firelight through the pane, And he sees within that the girl of his choice...
"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!" ...
"I'll tell being past all praying for - Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me;...
"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, It will pass as your husband's with the rest, While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn Will be gleaming at us from east to west;...
"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; "And why?" asks the man she had that day wed, With a start, as the band plays on outside....
They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been Seems listening aloof, as to things past date....