270
NEAR THE FORUM OF TRAJAN
“Who would join in a world so immortal
Yet touches no hand.
Why comes he, the child of the sunlight.
To our haunted land?
“Would he know of our power and ambition,
The worth of it all?
Let him seek the gold palace of Nero,
And read on its wall.
“Let him look for our loves and desires
In the palace of Kings,
Then bid him go hence with his living
That tortures and stings.
“He is the ghost that would haunt us
With dreams of past light;
Drive him back to his kind in the sunshine.
And leave us the night.”
