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Pompeii
Peter Hammill
Popularity ยท Moderate
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๐ฌ๐ง English ยท Original
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The golden dream, the seat of all decorum,
A satellite to match the light of Rome:
Its silver children chatter in the Forum,
The bath-house, and the brothels, and their homes
About the latest fashions for their clothes.
Across the Tyrrhenian Sea comes drifting
A song that none of them have ever known.
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The golden dream that holds back all the hours
For the ladies in their Dionysian rites,
Blonde heads all garlanded with flowers:
Wine and love and laughter through the night
In constant masque and pageant, constant flight.
The ground below them whispers in a murmur
Of passion which is hotter yet than white.
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The golden dream, the city of all cities,
Its towers piercing into the azure sky,
Whose hand is dealt, regarless of all pity:
Condemned to martyrdom, but not to die.
Two lovers look up from their hidden bower.
The wine has stood too long and it turns sour.
I see the tall and bending of your streets
But now they echo only leather tourist feet
And waking, ashen, grey-blue blinding death
Your sudden winding-sheet
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