Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/64

 LINES BY ARNO.

this shell my soul long cast away

Unechoing from the chantings of the sea,

Rang once again sonorous with the beat

Of the eternal breakers, resonant

And shaken with the unintermittent surf

Of sound that did usurp its every niche.

Its porcelain chamber held the Atlantic main,

And all the pulses of the eternal heart

Opening a way into this fragile brain,

Trembling in mortal veins, found tabernacle

For the revolted betterness of God,

His ancient pities and august desires,

Within the narrow tenement of self

Whose walls expanding to the insurgent flow

Revealed the unexploited depths within.

This night the mood was on me, caught from prayer

And silent pacing by the Arno's bridges,

Notings of trudgers home, and knots of men

Boisterous in the wine-shops, beggars, children,

And lovers pausing in the gloom of columns,

And awed perusal of the other world's

Foothold in this,—the bell-tower, incandescent,

Moving upon the horizon as I moved,

Beside the dome's star-blotting canopy,

And many a sleeping tower and pinnacle

Impassive o'er the dark roofs and the lights,

And the six bridges whose deep-shadowed spans

Stir premonitions of obscurer worlds

That lie beneath the piers of this we tread;

This night the mood was on me and I knew

The ruth and pity of a million years,

Entered the shadows of forgotten times,

Tasted the powers of the age to come;

Saw all the temples, all the spires and domes,

Saw all the forums, and triumphal arches, 58