England and Yesterday

<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</SPAN></span></p> <h2>ROMANS IN DORSET. (TO A. B.)</h2> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">A stupor on the heath,</div> <div class="verse">And wrath along the sky;</div> <div class="verse">Space everywhere; beneath,</div> <div class="verse">The flat and treeless wold for us, with darkest noon on high.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Sullen quiet below,</div> <div class="verse">But storm in upper air!</div> <div class="verse">A wind from long ago,</div> <div class="verse">In mouldy chambers of the cloud, had ripped an arras there,</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">And singed the triple gloom,</div> <div class="verse">And let through, in a flame,</div> <div class="verse">Crowned faces of old Rome:</div> <div class="verse">Regnant, o’er Rome’s abandoned ground, processional they came.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Uprisen like any sun,</div> <div class="verse">Through vistas hollow gray,</div> <div class="verse">Aloft, and one by one,</div> <div class="verse">In brazen casque, the Emperors loomed large, and sank away.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">In ovals of wan light,</div> <div class="verse">Each warrior eye and mouth:</div> <div class="verse">A pageant brutal bright,</div> <div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</SPAN></span>As if, once over, loudly passed Jove’s laughter in the south;</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">And dimmer, these among,</div> <div class="verse">Some cameo’d head aloof,</div> <div class="verse">With ringlets heavy-hung,</div> <div class="verse">As golden stone-crop comely grows around the castle roof.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">An instant; gusts again,</div> <div class="verse">Then heaven’s impacted wall,</div> <div class="verse">The hot insistent rain,</div> <div class="verse">The thunder-shock: and of the Past, mirage no more at all.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">No more the alien dream</div> <div class="verse">Pursuing, as we went,</div> <div class="verse">With glory’s cursèd gleam;</div> <div class="verse">Nor sins of Cæsar’s ruined line engulphed us, innocent.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">The vision, great and dread,</div> <div class="verse">Corroded; sole in view</div> <div class="verse">Was empty Egdon spread,</div> <div class="verse">Her crimson summer weeds a-shake in tempest: but we knew</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">What Tacitus had borne</div> <div class="verse">In that wrecked world we saw;</div> <div class="verse">And what, thine heart uptorn,</div> <div class="verse">My Juvenal! distraught with love of violated Law.</div> </div></div> </div> <hr> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</SPAN></span></p> <h2>LINES ON VARIOUS FLY-LEAVES.<br/><br/><i>TO GWENLLIAN E. F. MORGAN.</i></h2> <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />