TWO SONNETS.
I.—ACTEA.
When the last bitterness was past, she bore
Her singing Cæsar to the Garden Hill,
Her fallen pitiful dead emperor.
She lifted up the beggar’s cloak he wore
—The one thing living that he would not kill—
And on those lips of his that sang no more,
That world-loathed head which she found lovely still,
Her cold lips closed, in death she had her will.
Oh wreck of the lost human soul left free
To gorge the beast thy mask of manhood screened!
Because one living thing, albeit a slave,
Shed those hot tears on thy dishonoured grave,
Although thy curse be as the shoreless sea,
Because she loved, thou art not wholly fiend.
II.—IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS.
Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard cold face?
—He wept, because a little child had died.
They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy’s features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man’s pride.
And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth round limbs so strangely like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart’s-desired.