Let's stop horsing around-it's not Domitian, it's you
We mean, and the omens are bad, very bad, and it's true
That virtue comes hard in face of the assigned clock,
And music, at sunset, faint as a dream, is heard from beyond
burdock,
And as for Domitian, the first wound finds the groin,
And he claws like a cat, but the blade continues to go in,
And the body is huddled forth meanly, and what ritual
It
gets is at night, and from
his
old nurse, a woman poor,
political.
II.
Tiberius on Capri
(a)
All
is
nothing, nothing all:
To tired Tiberius soft sang the sea thus,
Under
his
cliff-palace wall.
The sea, in soft approach and repulse,
Sings thus, and Tiberius,
Sea-sad, stares past the dusking sea-pulse
Yonder, where come,
One now by one, the lights of far Surrentium.
He stares in the blue dusk-fall,
For all is nothing, nothing all.
Let darkness up from Asia tower.
On that darkening island behind him,
spintriae
now stir.
In grot and scented bower,
They titter, yawn, paint lip, grease thigh,
And debate what role each would prefer
When they project beneath the emperor's eye
Their expertise
Of
his
Eastern lusts and complex Egyptian fantasies.
But darkward he stares in that hour,
Blank now in totality of power.
