Christ died, but living Nero turns
Your mute remorse to song; he gives
To idiot fate eyes like a lover’s,
And while his music plays, God lives.
Romantic and noble sentiments! I protest, they do me credit.
And then there are the fragments about Tiberius; Tiberius, need I add, the representative in my symbolic scheme of love. Here is one. “In the gardens at Capri.” (All my scenes are laid in gardens, I notice, at night, under the moon. Perhaps the fact is significant. Who knows?)
Hour after hour the stars
Move, and the moon towards remoter night
Averts her cheek.
Blind now, these gardens yet remember