Читать книгу Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 20

O poet, come you haunting here

Where streets have stolen up all around,

And never a nightingale pours one

   Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,

Thought you to find all just the same

Here shining, as in hours of old,

   If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise

At seeing that changes wrought in Rome

Are wrought yet more on the misty slope

   One time your home?

Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?

Swing the doors open noisily?

Show as an umbraged ghost beside

   Your ancient tree?

Or will you, softening, the while

You further and yet further look,

Learn that a laggard few would fain

   Preserve your nook?.

– Where the Piazza steps incline,

And catch late light at eventide,

I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,

   “’Twas here he died.”

I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,

Where day and night a pyramid keeps

Uplifted its white hand, and said,

   “’Tis there he sleeps.”

Pleasanter now it is to hold

That here, where sang he, more of him

Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,

   Passed to the dim.