C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Arthur Christopher Benson (18621925)
After Construing
L
The story of your grim campaigns,
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the camp’s incessant hum,
At eve, beside the tumbling flood
In high Avaricum,
When shrilled your shattering trumpet’s noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
The secret of your deep designs,
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines?
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
No smile upon your haggard face;
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue’s base.
Beats strongly through the arid page;
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight
Far in the illimitable blue,—
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.