Latin Lecturer

FOUNDED IN IQI2 BY HARRIET MONROE

VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 4

JANUARY 1957

ROSALIE MOORE

LATIN LECTURER

(THE LAST CLASS BEFORE SUMMER)

Whatever his own eye troubles to make clear,

As the eagle plunges, ideal swimmer and angel,

He saw, and seizes.

If the falcon signal,

Flying as semaphore:

Lift of an eye, a wing,

With the hush of a train....

If the sparrows roister,

Stranded on backs of temples

like moving freights,

Are Roman, sometimes reclining,

His own invention....

Remember how also amid the clang and report

of the yard-

Its auction disquiet,

Its surge of girls in the plaid-

He can make you think of the rain

Anda landing in Britain:

The tremulous knees, the waiting,

The massing for stations,

The shield curt to the face,

As onward the cold cliff,

Then the leg is suddenly chalked

By the shore and the stiffness;

Till caught in an updraft and ready,

They found themselves sanded,

Too many and too strong

For that strip of shore.

And he takes to himself his watch

As the face of an elder-

Its shielded, impassioned wheel:

And feeling unsteady,

Senses the loss of his objects.

The lime and the envy burn

In trans-Alpine snow;

The birds like jacks

Have tracked the plain and crossed it

And flown like nail-prints.

And the evening comes over water-

Sets in a clutch of boughs

Like a hen or a vacancy;

And he knows, but loves, what he is.

Oh water, be under us like a shine.

The floor we played on,

The linoleum we paid for,

The life we led.