Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/20

 Taken from life while life and love were new,

He lies beneath God's seamless veil of blue;

Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o'er his head,

And oleanders bloom to deeper red,

Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.

Look farther north unto that broken mound,—

There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb

Raised by a daughter's hand, in lonely gloom,

Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,

Sleeps after all his weary conquering.

Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind and rain

Have broken down his stronghold; and again

We see that Death is mighty lord of all,

And king and clown to ashen dust must fall.

Mighty indeed their glory! yet to me

Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,

Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,

Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.

His gilded shrine lies open to the air;

And cunning sculptor's hands have carven there

The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,

The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,

The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,

The almond-face which Giotto drew so well, 6