Classic Poem

It was noonday, after a rain storm, and the world was fresh and bright;
But I stood in an inner shadow, like the shade of a noonday night,
And the foreign blood that is in me bade me sit down and write.
From the vine-screened open window, the sunlight seeming to float
Left a scene like a lonely sea-scape and a sinking ship — and a boat,
And it drifted nearer and nearer till it came within toy gun range.
There was only one man in her and his eyes were the eyes of Change;
And his face seemed strangely familiar, and his face seemed strangely strange,
Like a known face softened and thinner and weary with sorrow untold;
Or a face the cartoonist had libelled grown suddenly human — and old.
And it vanished — the ship had vanished — and it vanished with sea and boat,
And the Son of a Foreign Father sat down at his desk and wrote.

And the plastered wall receded, in a mist like the mist of tears,
Till it seemed to become a curtain at the back of other years.
And there were three shadows before it, and I stood! though I stood alone,
For above seemed the shadows of Kingdom and the shadow of a throne.
And the shade of the man sat sadly, hand to forehead and elbow to knee. . . .