Lord Caesar, when you sternly wrote
The story of your grim campaigns
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the impenetrable wood,
Amid the camp's incessant hum
At eve, beside the tumbling flood,
In high Avaricum,
You little recked, imperious head,
When shrilled your shattering trumpets' noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
Ah me! Who penetrates today
The secret of your deep designs?
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines?
The Mantuan singer pleading stands;
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
But you are silent, secret, proud,
No smile upon your haggard face,
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue's base.
I marvel: That Titanic heart
Beats strongly through the arid page,
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Like dizzy revellers stumbling out
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight,
The ray of that sequestered sun,
Far in the illimitable blue,—
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.
—Arthur Christopher Benson
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