University of Virginia Library

1.

Two neighbours from each other claim'd a field,
And neither of the two his claim would yield.
Wild words between them pass'd. These nothing skill'd.
Blows follow'd words; and one of them was kill'd.
The dead man's kinsfolk then together came,
Sworn to do justice: and did just the same.
That is to say, they did a second time
What, done the first time, they had judged a crime,
And slew the slayer. From these deaths arose
'Twixt tribe and tribe long strife of living foes;
Who in the dead men's quarrel fought, until
Which of the dead men did the other kill
Was by their hostile progeny forgot;
And neither side could quite remember what
Each side was fighting for, tho' generations
Prolong'd the conflict, and at last two nations
In arms opposed each other. The sole aim
And end of all such conflicts is the same,
Whether two peasants or two peoples fight:
Each from the other strives to wrest the right;
Each on the other strives to wreak the wrong;
And each, as both the varying strife prolong,
Is vanquisht or is victor, turn about.
For, as “the whirligig of time” whirls out
Alternate chances, is the vanquisht race
Avenged on the victorious. In this case,
Born of the conquer'd tribe, arose (men say)
After long centuries had roll'd away,
A conqueror: who, in half a hundred fights,
The wrongs of his slain fathers to the rights
Of their more fortunate sons converted; slew,
And led to slaughter, thousands; but o'erthrew
The overthrower, and to dust beat down
A secular oppression. Tower and town
Tumbled in smoky ashes, heaps of bones
Pasht and in a bloody puddle, gasps and groans
Of masht-up men, a mass of different deaths
Mixt with a murmur of admiring breaths,
Founded the first eternal monument
Which in men's memories made this last event
Imperishable; and, with gush of gore
And glory from men's minds for evermore
Wiped out the first, poor, perishable, mean
Cause of the conflict, which thereby had been
Crown'd with immortal claim upon the praise
And retrospective pride of after days.

2.

To many a lyre by many a lyrist strung,
About the land that hero's deeds were sung.
And many a homely lay, from door to door,
From sire to son, repeated o'er and o'er,
Transmitted to a far posterity
Traditions of his worth. But, rolling by,
Time, in its unretentive current, brought
New interests, new desires, to thrust from thought
The rusted image of the Heroic Age;
Whereof this monument remain'd to wage
War with Oblivion. Vainly; till, by chance,
Its mouldering record caught the fervid glance
Of one who, haunted by a name forgot,
Raked in old legends long remember'd not
For glimpses of that name; which, like a star
Flashing mysterious splendour from afar,
Brighten'd the abysmal past. Its fading beams
This poet mingled with his own fresh dreams,
And wrought therefrom, to renovate renown,
A poem which the whole world for its own
Claim'd and forthwith immortalised. Thereof
(As, from the music of Amphion, rough
With topless towers, arose in circuit strong
The Theban ramparts raised by rolling song)
A new eternal monument was made:
Whose glory cast into oblivious shade
(Or in its brighter self absorb'd anon)
The lesser lustres of the former one.
For, from this fresh eternal monument
Gracing the threshold of an age, were sent
Memnonian melodies and echoes far,
Waked by the radiance of the rising star
Of a new art more beautiful than war.

3.

The old eternal monument, meanwhile,
Whereof naught rested but a ruin'd pile
Of names and dates (mere useless rubbish reckon'd)
Had furnish'd forth foundations for the second.

4.

And all men deem'd the Poet's work to be
More lasting than the Hero's. Nathless, he
Who wrote the poem which, by men proclaim'd
Immortal, made its mortal parent famed,
Had died of want in some obscure small town.
Men search'd, in vain, the empire up and down
To find his birthplace; and, not finding it,
(Tho' many volumes were to help them writ,
Each volume proving hopelessly absurd
Whatever by the others was averr'd)
The baffled seekers by degrees began
To shape the ideal image of the man
Out of his song; imagining a face
And figure suited to his spirit's grace.
The State, then, order'd that this image, cast
In ever-during bronze, should be at last
Erected in the imperial capital
On a tall pillar; to be seen of all
Who there, throughout the ages, came and went.

5.

This was the third eternal monument;
Which all the previous monuments effaced.
And the great poet's name, upon it traced,
Was read by multitudes who read no more
The old-fashion'd verses whence that name of yore
Its immortality of fame received;
Which from Oblivion nothing new retrieved
Save the bronze image, on whose marble base
His name still figured, in the market place.

6.

Long while this third eternal monument
Struggled with time, and the wild weathers bent
On its destruction. But it felt their strength;
And, bit by bit, the rain and rust at length
Wore out the graven words and sculptured frieze.
The image, also, dwindled by degrees.
One day the lightning struck it, and it fell.
At least, so saith the civic chronicle
Which is our warrant (since we cannot show
Proof more conclusive) for believing now
That such a statue once commemorated
The birth (by modern critics much debated)
Of such a poet. Nowadays you see
A brave soap-boiling manufactory
Upon the spot where once that statue stood,
Which made immortal, for the multitude
That moved beneath it in the days gone by,
The poet's unremember'd memory;
Who sung the imperishable song; that wrought
Renew'd eternity in human thought
For that immortal hero's deathless name;
Whose perisht immortality of fame
Rose from the reek of bloody towns ablaze,
Even as the smoke that rises nowadays
From yon tall chimney; which yet marks the spot
Where stood the statue men remember not.

7.

These facts we have thought fitting to consign
In the foregoing record, line by line,
To the attention of posterity;
In order that we haply might thereby
Save all these otherwise entirely lost
Eternities; which mutually cost
Each other's ultimate annihilation.
Nothing remains of them, but this narration.

8.

And, if this last must be forgotten too
(Leaving no vestige to the future) who
Will owe its author (the fourth time, alas!)
‘A monument more durable than brass?’