IN Rome, as I look from my lattice And lean to the night, Where the living sleep, still as the dead are, All in the sunlight. The dead are awake 'mid our resting Beneath the pale moon. I arise and will walk with their numbers, Dawn rises so soon. I hear the bell voices together Crash into strange sound— "I, Trajan, am cold"; "I, Aurelius, Lie stiff in the ground." "Grey Cassius sleeps long, and grim Brutus, Proud Cæsar is dead"; Thus the voices of time in their singing Roll over my head. O spirits that throng me and whisper In desolate street, O souls that so follow and mock me, You laugh and repeat:— "Who is he who shouts into the silence More lone than us dead, Who says he would walk with our numbers With echoing tread? "Who would join in a world so immortal Yet touches no hand, Why comes he, the child of the sunlight, To our haunted land? "Would he know of our power and ambition, The worth of it all? Let him seek the gold palace of Nero, And read on its wall. "Let him look for our loves and desires In the palace of Kings, Then bid him go hence with his living That tortures and stings. "He is the ghost that would haunt us With dreams of past light; Drive him back to his kind in the sunshine, And leave us the night." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...GOOD AND BAD LUCK by HEINRICH HEINE CACOETHES SCRIBENDI by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE PORTENT by HERMAN MELVILLE A PETITION TO TIME by BRYAN WALLER PROCTER AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN REDBEAST by SAMUEL ROGERS THE MOTHER'S LAMENT by ST. CLAIR ADAMS THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): HYLAS by APOLLONIUS RHODIUS |