Soft the olive groves are gleaming,
  War has found surcease,
And as Capri sits a-dreaming
Soft the olive groves are gleaming,
  Crowning her with peace.

    —­Walter Taylor Field

PALLADIUM

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow
  Was the Palladium, high ’mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,
  And fought, and saw it not—­but there it stood!

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain’d their light
  On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. 
Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight
  Round Troy,—­but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. 
  Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
  We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

Men will renew the battle in the plain
  Tomorrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
  Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,
  And fluctuate ’twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,
And fancy that we put forth all our life,
  And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
  Upon our life a ruling effluence send;
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,
  And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

    —­Matthew Arnold

AFTER CONSTRUING

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.