Virocon -- Virocon --Still the ancient name rings onAnd brings, in the untrampled wheat,The tumult of a thousand feet.
Where trumpets rang and men marched by,None passes but the dragon-fly.Athwart the grassy town, forlorn,The lone dor-beetle blows his horn,
The poppy standards droop and fallAbove one rent and mournful wall:In every sunset-flame it burns,Yet towers unscathed when day returns.
And still the breaking seas of grainFlow havenless across the plain:The years wash on, their spindrift leapsWhere the old city, dreaming, sleeps.
Grief lingers here, like mists that lieAcross the dawns of ripe July;On capital and corridorThe pathos of the conqueror.
The pillars stand, with alien grace,In churches of a younger race;The chiselled column, black and rough,Becomes a roadside cattle-trough:
The skulls of men who, right or wrong,Still wore the splendour of the strong,Are shepherds' lanterns now, and shieldTheir candles in the lambing field.
But when, through evening's open door,Two lovers tread the broken floor,And the wild-apple petals fallRound passion's scarlet festival;
When cuckoos call from the green gloomWhere dark, shelving forests loom;When foxes bark beside the gate,And the grey badger seeks his mate --
There haunts within them secretlyOne that lives while empires die,A shrineless god whose songs abideForever in the countryside.
