Mother of all my cities once there lay
About your weedy wharves an orient shower
Of spice and languorous silk and all the dower
That Ocean gave you on his bridal day.
And now the youth and age have passed away
And all the sail superb and all the power;
Your time’s a time of memory like that hour
Just after sunset, wonderful and grey.
Too tired to rise and much too sad to weep,
With strong arm nerveless on a nerveless knee,
Still to your slumbering ears the spousal deep
Murmurs his thoughts of eld eternally;
But your soul wakes not from its holy sleep
Dreaming of dead delights beside a tideless sea.
XXIII
November is that historied Emperor
Conquered in age but foot to foot with fate
Who from his refuge high has heard the roar
Of squadrons in pursuit, and now, too late,
Stirrups the storm and calls the winds to war,
And arms the garrison of his last heirloom,
And shakes the sky to its extremest shore
With battle against irrevocable doom.
Till, driven and hurled from his strong citadels,
He flies in hurrying cloud and spurs him on,
Empty of lingerings, empty of farewells
And final benedictions and is gone.
But in my garden all the trees have shed
Their legacies of the light and all the flowers are dead.
XXIV
Hoar Time about the House betakes him slow
Seeking an entry for his weariness.
And in that dreadful company distress
And the sad night with silent footsteps go.
On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow
And in the woods without what memories press
Where, waning in the trees from less to less
Mysterious hangs the hornéd moon and low.
For now December, full of agéd care
Comes in upon the year and weakly grieves;
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair
And with mad trembling hand still interweaves
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.
XXV
It freezes: all across a soundless sky
The birds go home. The governing dark’s begun.
The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun;
The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die.
Death with his evil finger to his lip
Leers in at human windows, turning spy
To learn the country where his rule shall lie
When he assumes perpetual generalship.