The Garden of Years and Other Poems/Pompeii

The giant slept, and pigmies at his feet, Like children moulding monuments of snow, Piled stone on stone, mapped market-place and street, And saw their temples column-girdled grow: And, slowly as the gradual glaciers grope Their way resistless, so Pompeii crept, Year by long year, across the shelving slope Toward the sea:—and still the giant slept.

Belted with gardens, where the shivered glass Of falling fountains broke the pools’ repose, As they had been asleep upon the grass, A myriad villas stretched themselves and rose: And down her streets, grown long and longer still, Grooving the new-laid stones, the chariots swept, And of a sudden burst upon the hill Vast amphitheatres. Still the giant slept.

With liquid comment of the wooing doves, With wanton flowers, sun-conjured from the loam, Grew the white city of illicit loves, Hostess of all the infamy of Rome! A marble harlot, scornful, pale, and proud, Her Circean court on ruin’s brink she kept, Lulled by the adoration of the crowd To lethal stupor. Still the giant slept.

Incense-encircled, pacing day by day Through temple-courts reëchoant with song, Sin-stunned and impercipient, on her way She dragged her languid loveliness along. With lips whereon a dear damnation hung, With dark, dream-clouded eyes that never wept, Flawlessly fair, the faulty fair among, She kissed and cursed:—and still the giant slept.

Here, for a mute reminder of her shame, Her ruins gape out baldly from their tomb; A city naked, shorn of all but name, Blinking and blind from all her years of gloom: A beldam who was beauty, crying alms With leprous lips that mouthe their prayers in vain; Her deaf destroyer to her outstretched palms Respondeth not. The giant sleeps again! , 1900.