The Garden of Years And Other Poems
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Gloria Mundi (PARIS, 1900) MAGICIAN hands through long, laborious nights Have made these princely palaces to loom Whiter than are the city's legion lights, On threads unseen stretched out across the gloom. Reared in an hour, for one brief hour to reign, The proud pavilions watchful hold in fee A world's achievements, where the stately Seine Slides slowly past her bridges to the sea. Mute and memorial, as on either bank She sees the marvel worked before her eyes, Beholds as in a vision, rank on rank, Pagoda, dome, and campanile rise, Like to a mother scowling on a child Sceptred and crowned to make a queen of May, The Seine, that sorrowed not for France defiled, Past France triumphant frowning goes her way. Yet, dragged reluctant from these ransomed shores, Upon her tide, that sullenly and slow Creeps chann
...elward, the unapparent scores Of history's spectres disregarded go; And as the Empress City gains the seat Of that imperial throne to which at last By devious ways she comes, beneath her feet The Seine in silence blots away the past. Blots out the warning of cathedral bells, The night of snowy scarfs, of swords, of staves, The muffled bass of tumbril wheels that tells Of mortal men that dig immortal graves; Blots out the faces, calmly unafraid, Of prince and peasant, courtesan and queen, When men made martyrs and were martyrs made, When France meant Hell and God meant Guillotine! Like pilgrims whom a holy city calls, The peoples bring their miracles to her; The world of peace lays down within her walls Its gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh: The West, wide-eyed, alert, intrepid, young, With rush of shuttles and the song of steam; The East, that, lotus-eating, gropes among The half-remembered fragme...
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