Two thousand years ago the old man died; And Nature that, with some laws, he defied, Will, patient, not forgetful, at his death Have returned arcades, flow’r beds, to waste heath. Tradition shadows not their place.— His name? The Bard has not handed it down to fame. A sudden vision of his youth, no more Than a parenthesis of lines, some score. In words how little we are told;—and yet How impossible for us to forget That haunting figure, in his parterres made Out of the wild with his own brain for spade! For not in Virgil’s verse alone he lives; In all Earth’s gardens the “Corycian” survives! A Golden Age Bucolica, Ecl. IV. Pollio vv. 1-63 Muses of Sicily, if I rehearse Our peasants’ pleasures, toils, in Latin verse, I owe your idylls that my heart beats true To the kind honest lot that once I knew; And frames visions I have seen, Still, in woods and pastures green. Nature, changed, lives. Ages-leaves in a blast— Flutter away, in dreams, all dead and past;— Fleeting, alike ease that pays righteous toll, And triumphs won from agonies of soul. For when Fancy plays at Thought In Dreamland, Time, Space are nought. Slumber I, or wake? Is it that the long Iron Age dies, as in the Sibyl’s song? Does Justice return? Saturn wear his crown? From high Heaven does a God-child come down? Does Pollio’s Consulate The Golden Age reinstate? Reconciler of old friends! Yours the care To efface bloodstains of the past, prepare For the advent of a Peace-maker, heal Aches—foreboding fresh horrors—that we feel. He comes! be a path paved, meet To be trod by Holy feet! A noble task to clear and keep a space Where you shall model a heroic race On yourself—fit, if few, companions made For their future Chief, nor without the aid Of Gods visible, as he In his Paradise shall be. In the womb now! and in their charge the Birth, Sun’s, Moon’s, of the most precious Thing on Earth! Not for ten full months must the Babe see light! Keep watch and ward, Day’s Lord, Lady of Night! Be Peace throughout! hold your breath, Thunders above, fires beneath! Born! you lie, Babe, lapped in the calm, warm air; Earth laughs with blissfulness to see you there. Goats fain would suckle you; while you are near, They feel they have nought from wild beasts to fear. Snakes die; nightshade bids its root Nurture no fair traitor fruit. Touch the ground; flowers of all hues will spring; Of sweetest scent, and with no thorns to sting; Such as the common wayside thickets know, Or nowhere but in palace gardens blow. Ivy, Assyrian nard Sue alike for your regard;