Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather–for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists–
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.
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and smelt it like water,Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, alittle troublesome, a little terrible.I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in deathnor in a walled garden,In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, thateasily lock the world out of doors.Here on the rock…
How many turn back toward dreams and magic, how many
Run home to Mother Church, Father State,To find in their arms the delicious warmth and folding of souls.The age weakens and settles home toward old ways.An age of renascent faith: Christ said, Marx wrote, Hitler says,And though it seems absurd we believe.Sad children, yes. It is lonely to be adult, you need a father.With a…
It is true that, older than man and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf
But there’s no storm; and the birds are still, no song; no kind of excess;Nothing that shines, nothing is dark;There; is neither joy nor grief nor a person, the sun’s toothsheathed in cloud,And life has no more desires than a stone.The stormy conditions of time and change are all abrogated, the essentialViolences of survival, pleasure,Love,…
The bay is not blue but sombre yellow
foam-headsAnd tiger-striped with long lovely storm-shadows.You love this better than the other mask; better eyes than yoursWould feel the equal beauty in the blue.It is certain you have loved the beauty of storm disproportionately.But the present time is not pastoral, but foundedOn violence, pointed for more massive violence: perhaps it is notPerversity but need that…
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Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
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