At Corinth
At Corinth one has forgiven
The recording travellers in the same past
Who first entered this land of doors,
Hunting a precise emotion by clues,
Haunting a river, or a place in a book.
Here the continuous evocations are washed
Harder than tears and brighter,
But less penetrating than the touch of flesh,
(Our fingers pressed upon eyelids of stone),
Yet more patient, surely, watching
To dissolve the statues and retire
Night after night with a dissolving moon.

The valley mist ennobles
Lovers disarmed by negligence or weather,
And before night the calm
Discovers them, breathing upon the nerves,
The scent of exhausted lamps.
Here stars come soft to pasture,
And all doors lead to sleep.
What lies beneath the turf forbids
A footstep on the augustan stair,
The intrusion of a style less pure,
Seen through the camera's lens,
Or the quotations of visitors.

My skill is in words only:
To tell you, writing this letter home,
That we, whose blood was sweetened once
By Byron or his elders in the magic,
Entered the circle safely, found
No messenger for us except the smiles.
Owls sip the wind here. Well,
This place also was somebody's home,
Whipped by the gulf to thorns,
A house for proverbs by a broken well.
Winter was never native here; nor is.
Men, women, and the nightingales
Are forms of Spring.