Classic Poem

City of mist and rain and blown gray spaces,
——Dashed with wild wet color and gleam of tears,
Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the passionate faces
——Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years,
Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places?
——Cometh there not as a moon (where the blood-rust sears
Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces),
——Gliding, a ghostly Queen, through a mist of tears?

Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendor,
——Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain
Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render
——Silent the gazer on glory without a stain!
Here and here, do we whisper, with hearts more tender,
——Tusitala wandered through mist and rain;
Rainbow-eyed and frail and gallant and slender,
——Dreaming of pirate-isles in a jewelled main.

Up the Cannongate climbeth, cleft asunder
——Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea
Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder,
——Nay, for the City is throned on Eternity!
Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder
——Closes an hour for the world and an æon for me,
Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder
——Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea.