NEAR THE FORUM OF TRAJAN
In Rome, as I look from my lattice
And lean to the night,
Where the living sleep, still as the dead are,
All in the sunlight.
The dead are awake 'mid our resting
Beneath the pale moon.
I arise and will walk with their numbers.
Dawn rises so soon.
I hear the bell voices together
Crash into strange sound—
“I, Trajan, am cold”; “I, Aurelius,
Lie stiff in the ground.”
“Grey Cassius sleeps long, and grim Brutus,
Proud Caesar is dead”;
Thus the voices of time in their singing
Roll over my head.
O spirits that throng me and whisper
In desolate street,
O souls that so follow and mock me,
You laugh and repeat:—
“Who is he who shouts into the silence
More lone than us dead,
Who says he would walk with our numbers
With echoing tread?
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