“But you are not,” Charles chuckled. “You are here,
And never will know the sun again, my dear!”
“Yea,” whispered those whom no one had addressed;
“With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed,
We were brought here, to take our dusty rest.
“And here, alas, in darkness laid below,
We’ll wait and listen, and endure the show . . .
Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!”
1911.
AQUAE SULIS
The chimes called midnight, just at interlune,
And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations
Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune
The bubbling waters played near the excavations.
And a warm air came up from underground,
And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred,
That collected itself, and waited, and looked around:
Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard:
Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath the pile
Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead:
“And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle
Close on the site of the temple I tenanted?
“The notes of your organ have thrilled down out of view
To the earth-clogged wrecks of my edifice many a year,
Though stately and shining once—ay, long ere you
Had set up crucifix and candle here.
“Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing,
Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved,
Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing,
And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!”