The Cultural Skeleton

This fellow fed the exile and the king,

His eye elected to the mind's height, his head

Sublime in grace while no anarchic trumpet

Astounded the solemn oaks below his bed.

But when his fiat wavered and crowns tarnished

In folly and disuse, the sudden yes

Exploding on the streets became for him

Perdition's bomb, the gavel in distress,

The throne that elevated his ambition

Descends unto the kettle-fires of winter;

Relic of history, once fuel for disdain,

Every man now nourishes a splinter.

The plaster-head of Louis on the sill

Is dumbly gathering nostalgia. No god

In anger rights this paradox: what built

The pyramids had ripened Aaron's rod.