AT PÆSTUM
The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,
A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,
The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,
Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.
These are the caskets of the sun-sealed years;
’Mid tides that ebb and flow, ’neath stars that set,
Deathless their grave and tranquil beauty ... yet
Buried in silence, in eternal tears.
Beneath these tympana the Dorians trod;
Here, Doric priests upon an alien shore
Made sacrifice, perhaps these myrtles wore,
And garlanded the offering to their god.
Demeter saw the bright libations spilled;
To Hermes leapt the scarlet through the fleece.
Amid these columns moved the gods of Greece;
These lofty spaces with the pæan thrilled.
This, centuries ago. Demeter now
Is known no more. Poseidon, too, hath fled.
’Twould seem that Pan and Hermes both are dead;
No Nike springs upon a Grecian prow.
Yet is this sacred pause, this pillared calm
Still stirred by whispers from Tyrrhenian waves
While near the shadows of these architraves
Lie smiling shores of terraced fruit and palm.
And springing from Demeter’s altar site,
Where the old dream of gods hath died away,
And the Greek torch burned down to ashen grey,
There blooms a star shape, mystical and white.
One mystical white star! Oh! Pagan fire
Whose temples stand, whose gods have been forgot,
One goddess holds in memory this spot,
Else why should Nature thus in bloom aspire?
Why else in this dim fane the sea intone,
And sun send fire to the altars bare,
And moss and lichen trace strange scripture, here
The lizards flash like symbols o’er the stone?
The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,
A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,
The far blue reaches of Salerno’s bay,
Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.