Classic Poem

The torn hillside with its crooked hands
Where Tom lay beneath the banks of light
Grows shadier, and through its shades
The sun looks seldomer. The laurels are faded.

Ah, how it blazed! the splintered leaves
Burned against your forehead, and your tongue
Grew thick with wisdom; till you laughed, and fled
Like a shadow from that senseless shape.

Then that pale life — scars on the tree —
Where, listlessly, among the mushrooms of your hill,
You stared at your comrades — fatal waxworks! —
And saw, pale, virtuous, half-concealed,

Hovering over each leafy and swollen cheek,
The blue transparency of a smile.
This was the last of that furious speech —
The lustre, the wreathing of the shade.

Strewn like sweat, like dropped jewels,
They lay there; their ringed mouths gaped
Like wounds about to speak, their eyes
Shrank back from those curved faces,

Staring, coagulated with light.
Tell how you were hunted by cunning death,
That night when, stumbling, soaked with blood,
You sank there with open mouth

Until the hunters came, and kneeling there
Lifted you, and saw covering your face
That greedy and imperishable arrogance. . . .
Man's choice, and man's magnificence

Grow monstrous, and unclouded by
The empty measure of his breath.
How can the grave hold, a statue name
Blood dried in that intolerable glare?

They stand like shattered and untopped columns,
The barbarous foliage of an age
Necessity instructed and destroyed.
There is no hesitation in those eyes.