Meditation on Pompei

A Sonnet

Achilles and Agamemnon, scene from Book I of the Iliad, Roman mosaic. From Pompei.

We love the ruins left by long-dead men
Not for themselves, nor from their stones compose
Our songs--their ghosts breathe not, nor spur the pen
By their too-lively presence to disclose,
As though with living tongue, long-buried words
New-grown beneath imagination's sun.
No--it is their builder's hand that fords
The treacherous stream of Time. Life's labor done,
In death he builds these palaces anew,
And peoples them with faces like our own.
Turning from these, my mind's eye lights on you--
Oh living love! Do not so darkly frown.
This fate Time but a breath our souls will spare:
Let us not mar this breath with trifling care.