Elegy

NO more the white refulgent streets,

Never the dry hollows of the mind

Shall he in fine courtesy walk

Again, for death is not unkind.

A civil war cast on his fame,

The four years' odium of strife

Unbodies his dust; love cannot warm

His tall corpuscles to this life.

What did we gain? What did we lose?

He still; grief for the pious dead

Suspires from bosoms of kind souls

Lavender-wise, propped up in bed.

Our loss put six feet under ground

Is measured by the magnolia's root;

Our gain's the intellectual sound

Of death's feet round a weedy tomb.

In the back chambers of the State

(Just preterition for his crimes)

We curse him to our busy sky

Who's busy in a hell a hundred times

A day, though profitless his task,

Heedless what Belial may say --

He who wore out the perfect mask

Orestes fled in night and day.

Allen Tate

Index to poems in the collection by Allen Tate