Sonnet

The pale procession of departed kings,
Who reigned in majesty in Greece and Rome,
Are one with fallen and familiar things,
The daisies' dazzle and the roads of home.
The coloured riot of the garden beds
Shows where their souls peep from old Mother Earth,
Under the greensward lie their haughty heads,
One with the slave in cycles of rebirth.

Old Thales and the wise men of the world,
Seers, soldiers, prophets, poets, what knew they?
Gay cavaliers whose life was love and rue,
Adventurers who sought the breaking day,
And rode strange seas under brown sails befurled—
What knew they since they did-not know of you?

Autolycus.