Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CALIGULA, by GEORGE LUNT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CALIGULA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The pagan from his gorgeous bed
Last Line: The purple sea thy hands had shed!
Subject(s): Roman Empire; Rome, Italy


THE Pagan from his gorgeous bed,
Of wroughten ivory chased with gold,
Bewildered, raised his restless head,
When heart and life were growing old;
The cruel dream, that fired his youth,
And led the Man,—a faded thing,—
And through the wreck the spectre, Truth,
Naked by life's exhausted spring.

At midnight through his echoing halls
The purple mockery well might grope,
And hear his footsteps languid falls
Announce despair, but never hope!
Oh, could he find, what never came,
Some boundless Lethe's generous flood,
To slake his heart's infuriate flame,
And wash his ocean-stain of blood!

And vassal guards, that shrank and cowered,
To meet their master's haggard eye,
And shook, as if a demon lowered,
When 'twas the Cesar tottered by!
His golden state,—his circled head,—
The pangs, that wrung the stifling groan,—
What slave would press his guilty bed,
To call the Roman's world his own?

Oblivion! 'twere the dearest word,
That ever blessed prophetic strain;
Be once those cooling waters poured,
The Cesar were himself again!
But no! Dark lord of dreaded power!
Whom long his prophet-heart has warned,
Oblivion were too sweet a dower,
From angry gods he feared and scorned.

The Thracian, on that marbled floor,
In weary slumbers sweet and deep,
Roams o'er his wastes, a slave no more,—
What dreams disturb an Emperor's sleep?
Resistless away is all his own,
His own the globe's supreme command,
And thrills through earth's remotest zone
The menace of his lifted hand.

Some deep impending woe must shake
The heart beneath that purple pall!
Do hosts the Roman slumberers wake,
Goth, Vandal, Hun, or grisly Gaul?
No, Rome still sleeps, and all the world
Yet pulsates with her mighty heart,—
Round him alone the shadow furled,
The Cesar's own peculiar part!

And there he glides, a livid thing,
Pale, glaring, feeble, fearing, feared,—
Oh say, what Furies round him cling,
This new Orestes, phantom-scared!
'THE SEA,—THE SEA!' wild, deep and drear,
Dim, dread, mysterious, undefined,
The Image of a formless fear,
A waste, void Horror—shakes his mind!

Ah conscience! though the voiceless doom
No Roman seer might dare to tell,
The boding of that unknown gloom,
The fountain of thy living hell!
'Twas BLOOD! thou guilty creature, BLOOD!
The coming of an endless dread,
The swell of that relentless flood,
The PURPLE SEA thy hands had shed!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net