Fragments

Troy Town is covered up with weeds,The rabbits and the pismires broodOn broken gold, and shards, and beadsWhere Priam's ancient palace stood.

The floors of many a gallant houseAre matted with the roots of grass;The glow-worm and the nimble mouseAmong her ruins flit and pass.

And there, in orts of blackened bone,The widowed Trojan beauties lie,And Simois babbles over stoneAnd waps and gurgles to the sky.

Once there were merry days in Troy,Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,The passing chariots did annoyThe sunning housewives at their wheels.

And many a lovely Trojan maidSet Trojan lads to lovely things;The game of life was nobly played,They played the game like Queens and Kings.

So that, when Troy had greatly passedIn one red roaring fiery coal,The courts the Grecians overcastBecame a city in the soul.

In some green island of the sea,Where now the shadowy coral growsIn pride and pomp and emperyThe courts of old Atlantis rose.

In many a glittering house of glassThe Atlanteans wandered there;The paleness of their faces wasLike ivory, so pale they were.

And hushed they were, no noise of wordsIn those bright cities ever rang;Only their thoughts, like golden birds,About their chambers thrilled and sang.

They knew all wisdom, for they knewThe souls of those Egyptian KingsWho learned, in ancient Babilu,The beauty of immortal things.

They knew all beauty--when they thoughtThe air chimed like a stricken lyre,The elemental birds were wrought,The golden birds became a fire.

And straight to busy camps and martsThe singing flames were swiftly gone;The trembling leaves of human heartsHid boughs for them to perch upon.

And men in desert places, menAbandoned, broken, sick with fears,Rose singing, swung their swords agen,And laughed and died among the spears.

The green and greedy seas have drownedThat city's glittering walls and towers,Her sunken minarets are crownedWith red and russet water-flowers.

In towers and rooms and golden courtsThe shadowy coral lifts her sprays;The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts,The shark doth haunt her hidden ways.

But, at the falling of the tide,The golden birds still sing and gleam,The Atlanteans have not died,Immortal things still give us dream.

The dream that fires man's heart to make,To build, to do, to sing or sayA beauty Death can never take,An Adam from the crumbled clay.