 | I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
 | VI. |
| I. |
|
|
|
| II. |
 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
'Tis strange, this stillness!
The night is well-nigh spent: the fires burn low:
'Tis stranger yet, that stillness in my breast!
Long years seem nought—I see my childhood's home,
Saint Mary's Convent on Mount Aventine
That overlooks half Rome. Again I note
That white-haired monk draw nigh me; hear him speak;
‘Boy, where thou gazest gazed in years gone by
Rome's oldest Augur, and King Romulus.
Ravens eleven in slow, successive flight
Sailed from the East. That Augur watched them long:
Then spake: “Yon ravens, King, are centuries;
Thy realm will last for centuries ten and one,
Then crumbling, leave its cycle incomplete
Since all is incomplete which is not God.”’
So spake that monk white-haired. I answered thus:
‘Ten centuries! thousand centuries fled, God's Church
Will yet be in her prime!’
295
'Tis stranger yet, that stillness in my breast!
Long years seem nought—I see my childhood's home,
Saint Mary's Convent on Mount Aventine
That overlooks half Rome. Again I note
That white-haired monk draw nigh me; hear him speak;
‘Boy, where thou gazest gazed in years gone by
Rome's oldest Augur, and King Romulus.
Ravens eleven in slow, successive flight
Sailed from the East. That Augur watched them long:
Then spake: “Yon ravens, King, are centuries;
Thy realm will last for centuries ten and one,
Then crumbling, leave its cycle incomplete
Since all is incomplete which is not God.”’
So spake that monk white-haired. I answered thus:
‘Ten centuries! thousand centuries fled, God's Church
Will yet be in her prime!’
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |