Virtuous Pagan

A Last View of Professor Emeritus John Moffat Mecklin,1871-1956, in the Stacks of the College Library

Huge, from this ruinous Platonic cave, His pagan shadow haunts the river fog - And there! Reed-pierced Sebastian, hung by the heels, His Christian, lower image under stands.

Flame gnaws its last of wick. The great head stares, Cave-caught. The mist is lifting. These are books - Or trees? - and this tiled alley, a trout stream. A cave of books - book-world, so like a cave. The delicate spines of dryads everywhere. Angels? The sweet girls, beautiful as trout, Drift down the tiers of books. Reach! Reach! The mist again.

This mind, once pickerel-swift and pickerel-still, Hung on its mucous film in the fluid cave Waiting an opening in murky thought To dart the spoon-snout ruthlessness of "Why?" - Tearing away the soft assumption-weed.

Clear wars of conscience! Stack lights like planets turning Ring the corona of this puzzled head. All the great causes, shut in covers, swirl Until, across our pale, fluorescent days, Light beyond light of his vast shadow falls To measure us, who pause, against one ghost.

(Reprinted, with permission, from The Nation)