An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.
The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,
 And yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, rage
 The yellowhammers mating. Yellow fire
 Blankets the captives dancing on their pyre,
 And the scorched lictor screams and drops his rod.
 Trojans are singing to their drunken god,
 Ares. Their helmets catch on fire. Their files
 Clank by the body of my comrade—miles
 Of filings! Now the scythe-wheeled chariot rolls
 Before their lances long as vaulting poles,
 And I stand up and heil the thousand men,
 Who carry Pallas to the bird-priest. Then
 The bird-priest groans, and as his birds foretold,
 I greet the body, lip to lip. I hold
 The sword that Dido used. It tries to speak,
 A bird with Dido’s sworded breast. Its beak
 Clangs and ejaculates the Punic word
 I hear the bird-priest chirping like a bird.
 I groan a little. “Who am I, and why?”
 It asks, a boy’s face, though its arrow-eye
 Is working from its socket. “Brother, try,
 O Child of Aphrodite, try to die:
 To die is life.” His harlots hang his bed
 With feathers of his long-tailed birds. His head
 Is yawning like a person. The plumes blow;
 The beard and eyebrows ruffle. Face of snow,
 You are the flower that country girls have caught,
 A wild bee-pillaged honey-suckle brought
 To the returning bridegroom—the design
 Has not yet left it, and the petals shine;
 The earth, its mother, has, at last, no help:
 It is itself. The broken-winded yelp
 Of my Phoenician hounds, that fills the brush
 With snapping twigs and flying, cannot flush
 The ghost of Pallas. But I take his pall,
 Stiff with its gold and purple, and recall
 How Dido hugged it to her, while she toiled,
 Laughing—her golden threads, a serpent coiled
 In cypress. Now I lay it like a sheet;
 It clinks and settles down upon his feet,
 The careless yellow hair that seemed to burn
 Beforehand. Left foot, right foot—as they turn,
 More pyres are rising: armored horses, bronze,
 And gagged Italians, who must file by ones
 Across the bitter river, when my thumb
 Tightens into their wind-pipes. The beaks drum;
 Their headman’s cow-horned death’s-head bites its tongue,
 And stiffens, as it eyes the hero slung
 Inside his feathered hammock on the crossed
 Staves of the eagles that we winged. Our cost
 Is nothing to the lovers, whoring Mars
 And Venus, father’s lover. Now his car’s
 Plumage is ready, and my marshals fetch
 His squire, Acoctes, white with age, to hitch
 Aethon, the hero’s charger, and its ears
 Prick, and it steps and steps, and stately tears
 Lather its teeth; and then the harlots bring
 The hero’s charms and baton—but the King,
 Vain-glorious Turnus, carried off the rest.
 “I was myself, but Ares thought it best
 The way it happened.” At the end of time,
 He sets his spear, as my descendants climb
 The knees of father Time, his beard of scalps,
 His scythe, the arc of steel that crowns the Alps.
 The elephants of Carthage hold those snows,
 Turms of Numidian horse unsling their bows,
 The flaming turkey-feathered arrows swarm
 Beyond the Alps. “Pallas,” I raise my arm
 And shout, “Brother, eternal health. Farewell
 Forever.” Church is over, and its bell
 Frightens the yellowhammers, as I wake
 And watch the whitecaps wrinkle up the lake.
 Mother’s great-aunt, who died when I was eight,
 Stands by our parlor sabre. “Boy, it’s late.
 Vergil must keep the Sabbath.” Eighty years!
 It all comes back. My Uncle Charles appears.
 Blue-capped and bird-like. Phillips Brooks and Grant
 Are frowning at his coffin, and my aunt,
 Hearing his colored volunteers parade
 Through Concord, laughs, and tells her english maid
 To clip his yellow nostril hairs, and fold
 His colors on him. . . . It is I. I hold
 His sword to keep from falling, for the dust
 On the stuffed birds is breathless, for the bust
 Of young Augustus weighs on Vergil’s shelf:
 It scowls into my glasses at itself.


















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