Classic Poem

Escorted by two policemen, little doubting
they guard and quiet a ferocious monster,
I arrive, saluted by heart-rending
cries and clutched by epileptic arms.

I halt trembling and speechless on the threshold.
A long thick taper reveals and aggravates
with faint gleam the horrible retreat.
The flame flickers in the draught, slant and yellow. . . .
From the wick it strives to wrench itself
and flee the misery that it slavish lights!

On the wretched and funereal bed,
in a black garment alien of aspect,
the hands joined together on the breast,
ice on the belly and a cloth over the face,
stiff and motionless the body lies.

And before this form in which my father
was I weep, in vain by reason admonished
that a corpse is no demolished throne
nor broken altar, but an empty gaol.

What friend does not accompany and support me?
The multitude, entering unasked,
turns about the pallet of death, lamenting;
and in the nearby church the trumpet sounds,
dismal and slow, farewell to the freedman.

For the people the bard is grace, not cark.
He is as the magnolia of the bourne
that rises white and triumphant into view
and to the dust of the way restores and yields
the noble chalice and the goodly scent.

Oh mind that rose and did attain unto
the eminent extreme of your desire!
For what reason did you rail at fate
in accents of the most exceeding grief?

Woe is me, in the waste land standstill,
frenzied, and with half my course to run,
who aspire and strive to cross a river
and find no bridge, nor boat, nor shallow place;
and yonder I discern, among the tilths
of the far bank, the felicitous goal,
and the sun dying, in triumphal honour,
beneath a gold and purple canopy!

I hear a wit say of my destiny:
“An attractive talent; lost however
in the gloom of evil and oblivion. . . .
A precious pearl in the slaver of a mollusc
shut up in its shell and fathoms deep
in a dark and a tempestuous sea. . . .”

In sublime absorption I excite
my mind, with consternation meditate
on that passing of all stars to a West
which yonside an illusion proves an Orient. . . .
And rapturous and reverent I bow me down.