University of Virginia Library

AUGUSTA REDIVIVA.

Soaked in depths of day and night, in sleep and laughter,
Art thou goddess, art thou child,
Woman-born but with no heed of our Hereafter
Yet by nothing here beguil'd?
When I gaze upon the ripeness of those pouting
Rhythmic rose-red old-world lips,
Then down ages comes the thunder of the shouting
In the Roman great eclipse;
And I picture pomp and state-craft with the gory
Sands of scenic pride and power,
And thy beauty throned by Cæsar in his glory,
Bursting into scarlet flower.
Other-time, and ancient circumstance and splendour,
Round thee with a harder line;
Yet those eyes of midnight can be mild and tender,
With deliciousness divine.
And that mouth that curls to meet me, proud and fearless,
Once by Emperors was kist;
When they leant upon thy bosom, lustful, tearless,
In their robes of amethyst.
Like verbena perfumes of the past and stages
Tramped by loud prætorian feet,
Cling about thee and unclose those grand grim pages,
Living, terrible and sweet.
Light of dew and bloom of passion, rich and rotten,
Yet in dying more than ours;
Breathe from thy full fairness of repasts forgotten,
And ambrosial breasts and bowers.
O Augusta, blood and flame and arms of iron,
If thou dost to love consent,
Yield their dreadfulness to thee and thus environ
Favours when thy limbs relent.
But thy milk is wine, thy meekness but the pity
Of the gods who cannot spare,
Dealing out the destined fate to soul or city
In the calmness of their care.
Heroes from those loins must issue, lordly natures,
Not the starvelings of our days;
Minds that give and take no seal or legislatures,
Duller than imperial rays.
Once thy love was death to little hearts of mortals
Who would flutter in thy fires,
And the fools that dared thee never left those portals
Blasted with their vain desires.
For thy cosmic unconcern was vast and awful
As the sweep of planets' path,
Never asking if thy pleasure might be lawful
Or consuming in its wrath.
Yet amid thy larger fancies lurked that sportive
Spirit of a babe at play,
Dropping deaths and lives and passing loves abortive,
Tears and laughters, on its way;
Infancy divinely deaf for ever making
Treasures of unhoarded joys,
In unconscious nakedness, and idly breaking
Hearts and continents and toys.