Poems (Linn)/Garden of Cluny

by Edith Willis Linn

GARDEN OF CLUNY.

HE who stands in Cluny's garden,
 In the city of the Seine,
Ivied towers rising round him
 Darkened by the century's stain—

Sees beneath his feet a pavement
 Worn by chariot-wheels that whirled
To their wars, men whose ambitions
 Made the history of the world.

There beneath a pile of granite
 Honey-combed by many a year,
Is the grave of one whose history
 Reads: "A Roman lieth here."

Who or what, no fable tells us,
 Man or woman, king or slave;
All of life summed in the sentence:
 "This an ancient Roman's grave."

All the glory now forgotten,
 All the sorrow, all the joy;
Was he conqueror or conquered?
 Fortune's tool or fortune's toy?

Or, a woman? whose great beauty
 Held an emperor in thrall;
In whose bosom raged the passions
 Which make nations rise or fall.

What to-day is all that glory?
 What those battles' loss or gain?
What are passions and their power?
 What are love and hate and pain?

Only this—though man or woman,
 One great battle had been fought,
One great, valiant, bloodless struggle,
 For some pure exalted thought.

Fought the fight as we must fight it,
 In the Spirit's mighty name,
Held within their soul the victory,
 Bore within their soul the shame.

He is greatest who best conquers;
 All beside is slow decay;
Nameless tomb, forgotten splendor,
 As the ages whirl away.

And the balance hangs forever
 Just between soul-loss and gain;
Good still fights the war with Evil
 In the city on the Seine.