On Hadrian's Wall

Here stood the Roman, knowing himself upon
the wave-crest northern frontier of his world,
exiled, uneasy, with the sharpened sense
estrangement brings us;
knowing, yet half-forgetting, how there lay
behind him all the sunshine and the wine
and the long lettered past.
Before him, the hard lands, the wilderness,
and the barbarian tribesmen squatting round
the squalid princely hearth,
as the old bard
recites the chieftain's genealogy,
chanting his praises as a cattle-thief.

Now I stand here, and feel upon my back
the ancient generous Mediterranean warmth,
knowing so well my debt, my gratitude,
to Rome and all that Rome inherited;
but ever at my back, always behind,
always receding into memory.

The air grows colder with the dropping sun,
darker the crags—the rusticated blocks
are etched to Piranesi lights and shades
(ruins and prisons)
and still the sun goes down.

Behind me lie the open sunlit plains
mellowed with immemorial tolerance
in the long civilizing years:
before me the steep sheep-track up the rocks
the dark horizon, and the tribal wars.

c.1950