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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MUNDI VICTIMA: 10 by ARTHUR WILLIAM SYMONS

Poet Analysis

First Line: WHAT SHALL YOUR LIFE BE IN THE YEARS TO COME
Last Line: "I AM THE MAN YOU TELL OF, HE IS I!"
What shall your life be in the years to come?
The world, that recks not of love's martyrdom,
Shall praise in you a weary passionate face,
Where tears and memories have left their trace,
Into a finer beauty fashioning
Your beauty, ever an unquiet thing.
You shall have riches: jewels shall be brought
From the earth's ends to please a wandering thought,
And the red heart of rubies shall suspire
To kiss your fingers, and the inner fire
That wastes the diamond's imprisoned soul
Shall flame upon your brows, an aureole,
And your white breast shall be devoutly kissed
By the pale fasting lips of amethyst,
And the cold purity of pearls enmesh
Your throat that keeps my kisses in its flesh.
Your beauty shall be clothed in raiment fit
For the high privilege, to cover it;
You shall be served ere any wish arise
With more than had seemed meet in your own eyes;
You shall be shielded lest the sun should light
A rose too red on cheeks that blossom white;
You shall be shielded from the wind that may
Tangle a tress delicately astray;
You shall be fenced about with many friends;
You shall be brought to many journeys' ends
By leisured stages; what was mine of old
Shall now be yours, cities and skies of gold,
And golden waters, and the infinite
Renewal of the myriad-vested night.
Where cool stars tesselated the lagoon,
In Venice, under some old April moon,
Shall not some April, too, for you be lit
By the same moon that then wept over it?
Shall you not drive beneath the boulevard trees
In that young Paris where I lived at ease?
And you shall see the women I have known,
Before your voice called me to be your own
Out of that delicate, pale, lilac air.
And all this you shall find, as I did, fair,
And all this you shall find, as now I find,
Withered as leaves a ruinous winter wind
Casts in the face of any summer's guest
Revisiting some valley of old rest.
You will remember me in all these things,
I shall go with you in your wanderings,
I shall be nearer to you, far away,
Than he who holds you by him, night and day;
Close let him hold you, close what can he do?
For am I not the heart that beats in you?
And if, at night, you hear beside your bed
The night's slow trampling hours with ceaseless tread
Bearing the haggard corpse of morning on,
You shall cry in vain for sleep's oblivion,
Haunted by that unsleeping memory
That wakes and watches with you ceaselessly.
What shall your life be? Loneliness, regret,
A weary face beside a hearthstone set,
A weary head upon a pillow laid
Heavier than sleep; pale lips that are afraid
Of some betraying smile, and eyes that keep
Their haunting memory strangled in its sleep.
"O mother!" is it I who hear you cry?
"O mother! mother!" is it only I?
"O my lost lover!" shall she not, even she,
Hear, and one moment pity you and me?
She must not hear, only the silence must
Share in the jealous keeping of that trust.
And when, perchance, telling some idle thing
Your husband rests his finger on my ring;
When your eye rests upon the casket where
My letters keep the scent of days that were,
My verses keep the perfume that was yours,
And the key tells you how my love endures;
When you shall read of me, shall hear my name,
On idle lips, in idle praise or blame;
Ah, when the world, perhaps, some day shall cry
My name with a great shouting to the sky;
You must be silent, though your eyes, your cheek,
Will answer for your heart, you must not speak,
Though you would gladly dare a thousand harms
To cry "The joy of life was in his arms!"
Though you would give up all to cry one cry:
"I loved him, I shall love him till I die,
I am the man you tell of, he is I!"



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