THE BROKEN CIRCLE

by: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

STOOD on Sarum's treeless plain,

The waste that careless Nature owns;

Lone tenants of her bleak domain,

Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

 

Upheaved in many a billowy mound

The sea-like, naked turf arose,

Where wandering flocks went nibbling round

The mingled graves of friends and foes.

 

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,

This windy desert roamed in turn;

Unmoved these mighty blocks remain

Whose story none that lives may learn.

 

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,

These awful listeners, blind and dumb,

Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,

As wave on wave they go and come.

 

"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"

I stand and ask in blank amaze;

My soul accepts their mute reply:

"A mystery, as are you that gaze.

 

"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm

From riven rocks their spoils to bring;

A nameless Titan lent his arm

To range us in our magic ring.

 

"But Time with still and stealthy stride,

That climbs and treads and levels all,

That bids the loosening keystone slide,

And topples down the crumbling wall,--

 

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,

Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;

They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,

And strew the turf their priests have trod.

 

"No more our altar's wreath of smoke

Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;

The fires are dead, the ring is broke,

Where stood the many stand the few."

 

My thoughts had wandered far away,

Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,

To where in deepening twilight lay

The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

 

Ah me! of all our goodly train

How few will find our banquet hall!

Yet why with coward lips complain

That this must lean, and that must fall?

 

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,

Its vanished flame no more returns;

But ours no chilling damp has known,--

Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

 

So let our broken circle stand

A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,

While one last, loving, faithful hand

Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

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