Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/288



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 Caesar 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?