Classic Poem

This is the hill of vases, urns, and jars,
The shattered relics of a far-off time—
It may be those which held beneath the stars
The wine of the immortals, when the clime
Was golden with the glory of the morn,
When the full grapes, half molten in the glow,
From globes of lucent amber, or those born
Unto the royal purple, gave their flow
Of embryo eloquence and mellow verse.
Here dusky grottos pierce the deep hill's side,
Each welling with earth's sweetest boon and curse,
Where mild-eyed Bacchus and his beasts abide—
Where his light beaker, never emptied quite,
Shows down its side the golden word “Content”,
And though he sings or laughs his joy outright,
Beneath that line the wine is never sent.
The dregs he throws among his snarling pards,
Which rave and roar and wallow at the feet
Of old Silenus, who no drop discards,
But drains his two-hand flagon at a heat.

These murky cells are choked with earthy musk,
As they had reached and tapped the antique store
Spilt by their shattered vases. The chill dusk
Exhales the odor at the reeking door.
From jutting fragments, broken lips of beasts,
The potter's fancy, mocking webs of mould
Pour down this columbarium of dead feasts,
And fan the air unutterably old.

What revellers o'er these flagons sung and laughed?
Where were the vineyards that bestowed the wine?
It may be from this jar Æneas quaffed,
And poured his first libation on the shrine
Reared at his landing. It may be—But hold!
The astonished fancy, starting at the thought,
Shrinks back from her own conjuring, where the bold
Oblivious riddle stares and answers naught.
Pelasgic, or Etruscan, Roman—all
These forms may mingle here; but they refuse,
More sternly than the mountains, to recall
Their age, their makers, and, it may be, use.

Enough! A flood of delicate purple haze
Pours through the trees: the very landscape reels
With the pure wine of sunset: the soft blaze
Heightens the loveliness it half conceals.
Spite of the Cross that sanctifies the mound,
These must be satyrs 'mong the carts and casks—
Gay peasants, decked in goatskins, lounging round,
Glowing with health and brown with vintage tasks.

Here, one by one, the little cars come in,
Bearing the new-pressed tribute to the hill
Crowned with their tents, and jocund with the din
Of thick-strung bells, where countless tassels fill
The air with brightness, gayly ringing round
A melody of colors deftly met.
From the near lawn there comes the sudden sound
Of hands that improvise the castanet
With snapping fingers, while the tambourine
Rattles and throbs, and rude Campagna feet
Chase the tarantula about the green,
Where smiles and flashing eyes together meet.

Why, surely this is Arcady? Not so.
Or Andalusian dance-enamored home?
Not so. Or festival beneath the glow
Of old Vesuvius? Pilgrim, this is Rome!
But surely these are Bacchus' antique vaults,
His chariot caverns and his leopard stalls,
About whose doors his thirsty retinue halts?
Stand by! The rout begins! his clarion calls!

Out of the gates, adrip, as it had dashed
Through sudden showers of old Falernian juice,
Rings the red car; the mellow air is flashed
With music; song and merriment let loose
Their fluttering reins, and follow round the hill
With flying hair, like ancient charioteers
When Nero led the circuit! Hark! be still!
Just at the turn where Caius Cestius rears
His marble peak, they halt their furious race,
And pass demurely, voiceless, with bent heads.
Sighing, they pass with melancholy pace
Where Keats and Shelley lie in flowery beds.
The lowest deity of classic Greece
Here, like the highest, bows the willing knee:
The last of her anointed bards were these,
Though born in exile, where the northern sea
Climbs the white cliffs, and, blind with his own locks,
Chants to the land Homeric tales of war,
Or, like pale Sappho, on the summer rocks
Breathes of Ionian isles that woo from far.
Under cathedral branches, tall and dark,
O'er flowery choirs and ivy-clad retreats,
Here swells the requiem of Shelley's lark,
Here, nun-like, chants the nightingale of Keats.
Though far from England's shrine, they sleep apart,
Their “'Minster Abbey” is the world's great dome—
Their “Poets' Corner” is its mighty heart,
While tear-fed blossoms write their epitaphs in Rome!