The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 2/The Golden Mile-Stone
THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE.
[The Milliorium Aureum, or Golden Mile-Stone, was a gilt marble pillar in the Forum at Rome, from which, as a central point, the great roads of the empire diverged through the several gates of the city, and the distances were measured.]
Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.
From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.
At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires,
Answering one another through the darkness.
On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And, like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree,
For its freedom
Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.
By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
Asking sadly
Of the Past what it can ne'er restore them.
By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair with stately stairways,
Asking blindly
Of the Future what it cannot give them.
By the fireside tragedies are acted
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,
And above them God, the sole spectator.
By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching
For a well-known footstep in the passage.
Each man's chimney is his Golden Mile-Stone,—
Is the central point from which he measures
Every distance
Through the gateways of the world around him.
In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,
As he heard them
When he sat with those who were, but are not.
Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,
Drives an exile
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead!
We may build more splendid habitations,
Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,
But we cannot
Buy with gold the old associations.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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