Classic Poem

Entering the strawberry-foliate demesne,
I pause (a tourist in the present tense),
Spectator of an architectural scene
Of Doric and Corinthian opulence.

Set to the musings of an autumn day
Serenely skied with undistracted grey,
Ducal redundancy (all balustrades,
Pilasters, porticoes, and colonnades)
Confronts me. (Vanbrugh made it for the man
Who carved rococo conquests for Queen Anne.)

In wars which burst before the South Sea Bubble
Muskets explode, hussars and pike-men plunder,
While Churchill, stimulating martial trouble,
Perturbs Palatinates with smoke and thunder.
Events unfold. The George Quartet contrives
William, Victoria, Edward; and at last
George Windsor's ermined; ruled by whom, arrives
Myself, obscurely pondering on the past —
Sententious thus . . . " From halted History comes
The gusty bugling of Malbroukian fame;
And what was once imperious in a name
Recedes with desolate drub of death-led drums.

On regimental flags his fights persist;
But I've no zeal to bolster up the story
Of an imperiwigged stingy strategist
Who caracoled upon extortionate glory . . ."
Meanwhile the sun reburnishes the vanes
And orbs of Blenheim Palace; and the clock
Clangs out a modern hour, as if to mock
The mustiness of Marlborough's campaigns.