THE ROMAN WAY

I

Being so weary then we turned aside

From the straight road and Roman Way that goes

Too straightly upward, on what breathless snows

Its measured lines' austerity descried.

"Captain, too stern this granite road!" we cried,

And "For whose right in militant array

Are led the sons of men this Roman Way?"

But the slow avalanche alone replied.

Therefore we turned aside, and day by day

Men passed us with set faces to the road,

And crying, "The Eternal City!" went their way,

While in the pleasant valley we abode

With all its dewy herbage and the fleet

Running of rivulets with silken feet.

II

And we had large experience with the stars

And sweet acquaintance with the clovered sods,

The seasons were our epics, filled with wars,

And heroes' councils and untroubled gods.

The groves elegiac, rivers pastoral,

Meadows athrill with sudden tragedies,

With loves of larks aloft and lyrical,

And busy comedy of the citizen bees.

Still of their genial fellowship who wait

The spring's incoming as a marriage morn

Whom fall and winter winds will make elate

As bugles a young hunter, we were borne

Along the casual current of each day

Apart from those who trod the Roman Way.

III

And in the main of living we were glad

That we had left the highway and had grown

To wear our tolerance as a silken gown

And smile at those who went in armour clad;

And old age came upon us, grey and sad,

Stealthy and slow, and passed and passed again

The onward faces of swift journeying men,

Keen with the life of some large Iliad.

Now—for our heads are stricken, our lives are

As flowers sodden in the winter rain—

We, who alive are dead—and whether far

Beyond the snows are blissful births of pain,

Or Rome, or Caesar, we know not—we say,

"There is one way of life, the Roman Way."