“Nor will the public criers ever have your name

in their classic horns,

“Nor Mars shout you in the wood at Aeonium,

Nor where Rome ruins German riches,

“Nor where the Rhine flows with barbarous blood,

and flood carries wounded Suevi.

“Obviously crowned lovers at unknown doors,

“Night dogs, the marks of a drunken scurry,

“These are your images, and from you the sorcerizing

of shut-in young ladies,

“The wounding of austere men by chicane.”

Thus Mistress Calliope,

Dabbling her hands in the fount, thus she

Stiffened our face with the backwash of Philetas the Coan.

III

MIDNIGHT, and a letter comes to me from our mistress:

M

Telling me to come to Tibur, At once!!:

“Bright tips reach up from twin towers,

Anienan spring water falls into flat-spread pools.”

 Prev. P 7/99 next