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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=415690" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Coin of Trajan in Australia</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through what strange winding ways of circumstance,<br>Through what conspiracies of time and chance,<br>By what long chain of hands, from his who pressed<br>Upon thy disc the Imperial countenance,<br>Then threw thee, one of many, with the rest—<br>By what long chain of hands, a living line<br>Of transfer hast thou come from his to mine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Could I but trace thee back from mine to his,<br>Through the long process of the centuries<br>From touch to touch of hands that took or gave,<br>And read as current things the destinies<br>Writ on each palm—of master, matron, slave—<br>Whereon a moment thou hast lain, I should<br>Know all that life can hold of ill or good.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How strange to think, nigh two millenniums gone,<br>While yet thy legend white from mintage shone,<br>At such an hour of just such day divine,<br>Some Roman maiden's hand thou layest upon,<br>Whose living warmth became a moment thine—<br>That into this thine actual substance stole<br>The gentle tremors pulsing from her soul!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor yet less strange to think of what long space<br>Thou layest forgot in some forgotten place<br>While Empire fell, or passed to Pontiff-Kings,<br>And while the gradual darkening of thy face<br>Was all thy share in all the change of things,<br>Till some chance hand thy secret touched at last<br>And drew thee forth to witness of the past;—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To be, when after lapse of many days<br>Thy vagrant fate through unrecorded ways<br>At length had brought thee to this alien clime,<br>A voice that, heedless all of blame or praise,<br>Protests the spirit of a regal time<br>Against a later dispensation, when<br>No more doth glory sway the souls of men.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sway me one instant with the glory gone,<br>One dazzled moment let me gaze upon<br>What is impossible again to be,<br>This image and this superscription con<br>As when in silver glow of novelty<br> <br>They stood for present Empire, and designed<br>A god incarnate throned amid mankind!—</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>* * * * *<br>Oh, magic disc, responsive to my mood!<br>I saw him on his dizzy altitude,<br>Serene, august, the lord of all the world!<br>Imperial in a space of light he stood,<br>While round his feet in storm-lit turmoil whirled<br>A cloud of striving Dignities, that hid<br>From him all nether woes ill-auguried.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Above distraction, and beyond dispute,<br>The incommunicable attribute<br>Of majesty made fiat of his breath;<br>And when all fain of some imagined suit<br>I lifted suppliant hands for life or death,<br>And caught his glance of calm Olympian pride,<br>I swooned, and, swooning, “Ave Caesar,” cried!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>* * * * *<br>The glory-tissued vision, warp and woof,<br>Dissolves before the sense of self-reproof.<br>Ah, foolish-fain of pictured History!<br>This in the only land beneath heav'n's roof<br>Where never yet hath manhood bent the knee<br>To man the one sole continent whose sod<br>The foot of regnant kinghood ne'er hath trod!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And yet—and yet—though all around us lies<br>The freest land beneath the o'er-arching skies,<br>Rich in a polity of common weal,<br>Is there among us aught that justifies<br>The scorn of ancient things? Can we repeal<br>The union 'twixt the present and the past,<br>And place ourselves as first, whom God made last</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Because of that which was is that which is;<br>We are the children of the centuries;<br>And if our ancients in excess of awe<br>To Caesar rendered even more than his,<br>We reap their legacy in sense of law;<br>Yea, Freedom conscious grew by stress of thrall<br>The might of one revealed the strength of all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Brunton+Stephens">James Brunton Stephens</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=415690" data-title="A Coin of Trajan in Australia de James Brunton Stephens" data-description="Through what strange winding ways of circumstance,
Through what conspiracies of time and chance,
By what long chain of hands, from his who pressed
Upon thy disc the Imperial countenance,
Then threw thee, one of many, with the rest—
By what long ..."></div>
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