Classic Poem

Now after yesterday
Time's travail of the days
(muscles expanding, contracting) painfully is over,
at last his hours rest, and the weary minutes
(the cells and units of experience
and the bloodpulse in the timetable
which is all
the substance and sensitive integration and what-we-are)
relax, and the abnormal throb and pang
is finished, he will not feel it again;
exhausted is the body now and the mind sleeps
which before was active and rested ill.
DEATH the skilled midwife attended here
and a New Child appeared from the perplexities of Time
and whimpered and cried out
final and alive in the breath of Reality
in the Spirit of Truth,
oppressed no longer in the dark Sphere of Spacetime
by the gravity and inertia of mean disregard
and the vacuous imagination of atomic souls,
but thriving to grow
Lord of the surface, down to the centre Lord—
The Spirit of Justice in men simply men.
It is enough,
shout or whisper Triumph now, this sleep continues.

ODYSSEUS has eaten Lotus,
he is estopped from awakening,
though eager are his companions on the planked deck
by the rowing trestles, waiting
with desire of him and of the bright oarblades,
their levers on the waters of infinite sea.

ÆNEAS has gone into the great cave,
the Sibyl having laid on his wrist her hand:
let it be known among the Greeks and heroes,
and let the tribal anarchs of the Italian tumult
doubt, forboding ROME, the peaceable mother of peoples
and the Bride of the Just King.