Poems from the Late Roman Empire

From ~www.netspace.net.au/~tlaloc/mainpage.html

These poems were written during the final fall of The Roman Empire by two men, Paulinus and Ausonius. During the lives of these men, the world changed, and the Western World fell into what later became known as the Dark Ages. One of these men was a Christian and the other wasn't. I forget which was which, (and it no longer matters, I imagine) but these are fine poems and I find their sadness and their understanding quietly moving and very pertinent to the world of today.

Hope you like them.

• I, through all chances that are given to mortals
  And through all fates that be,
  So long as this prison shall contain me,
  Yea, though a world shall sunder me and thee,
   
• Thee shall I hold, in every fibre woven,
  Not with dumb lips nor with averted face
  Shall I behold thee, in my mind embrace thee,
  Instant and present, thou, in every place.
   
• Yea, when the prison of this flesh is broken,
  And from the earth I shall have gone my way,
  Wheresoe’er in the wide universe I stay me,
  There shall I bear thee, as I do today.
   
• Think not the end, that from my body frees me,
  Breaks and unshackles from my love to thee.
  Triumphs the soul above its house in ruin,
  Deathless, begot of immortality.
   
• Still must she keep her senses and affections,
  Hold them as dear as life itself to be,
  Could she choose death, then might choose forgetting:
  Living, remembering, to eternity.
• Paulinus
• What colour are they now, thy quiet waters?
  The evening star has brought the evening light,
  And filled the river with the green hill-side.
  The hill-tops waver in the rippling water,
  Trembles the absent vine and swells the grape
  In thy clear crystal.
• Ausonius
• They wander in the deep woods, in mournful light,
  Amid long reeds and drowsy-headed poppies,
  And lakes where no wave laps, and voiceless streams,
  Along whose banks in the dim light grow old
  Flowers that were once bewailed names of Kings.
• Ausonius