Happy Ending

Excerpt from book: Memorial Day O Day of roses and regret, Kissing the old graves of our own! Not to the slain love's lovely debt Alone. But jealous hearts that live and ache, Remember; and while drums are mute, Beneath your banners' bright outbreak, Salute: And say for us to lessening ranks That keep the memory and the pride, On whose thinned hair our tears and thanks Abide, Who from their saved Republic pass, Glad with the Prince of Peace to dwell: Hail, dearest few ! and soon, alas, Farewell. Romans in Dorset A. D. MDCCCXCV A Stupor on the heath, And wrath along the sky; Space everywhere; beneath A flat and treeless wold for us, and darkest noon on high. Sullen quiet below, But storm in upper air! A wind from long ago, In mouldy chambers of the cloud had ripped an arras there, And singed the triple gloom, And let through, in a flame, Crowned faces of old Rome: Regnant o'er Rome's abandoned ground, pro- cessional they came. Uprisen as any sun Through vistas hollow grey, Aloft, and one by one, In brazen casques the Emperors loomed large, and sank away. In ovals of wan light Each warrior eye and mouth: A pageant brutal bright As if once over loudly passed Jove's laughter in the south; And dimmer, these among, Some cameo'd head aloof, With ringlets heavy-hung, Like yellow stonecrop comely grown around a castle roof. An instant: gusts again, Then heaven's impacted wall, The hot insistent rain, The thunder-shock; and of the Past mirage no more at all, No more the alien dream Pursuing, as wewent, With glory's cursed gleam: Nor sin of Caesar's ruined line engulfed us, innocent. The vision great and dread Corroded; sole in view Was empty Egdon spread, Her crimson summer weeds ashake in tempest: but we knew What Tacitus had borne ...