Spqr Poem by David Lewis Paget

When Caesar strode out from the waves to this shore
With a Legion, their breastplates in line,
He came uninvited, his purpose was war
‘All this island, ' he said, ‘will be mine! '
He came as a messenger, bringing the claims
Of an Empire that wouldn't hear ‘No! '
So I told Mirabel, as we danced on that beach,
It had happened a long time ago.

I've always been drawn by the sea's winter show
And the sandhills, or cliffs tall and bleak,
As the westerlies blow, or when covered in snow
When the southerlies play hide and seek.
In summer the ripples are gentle and slow
As they eddy and swirl at low tide,
But winter sees waters that rage as they flow
To beat up on the barren Cliffside.

The sea is a mystery, second to none
In the depths and the deeps of its way,
The smell of the seaweed and tang of the salt
As it blows in my face with the spray,
I would walk at the headland by day or by night
And return by the way of the beach,
When the sky was still bright with a cumulus light
Or be louring, dark and oblique.

They said that my life had been ebbing away
From some sickness, they didn't know why,
I had spent all my options, had nothing to say
But I knew I was going to die,
On this beach where the tide may well carry me out
With its flotsam, to weed-winding deeps,
Where the coral and starfish and conch they all lie
And the fairytale mermaid, she sleeps.

They said I'd have visions approaching the end
And I waited that day in despair,
My heart had been broken when Mirabel left
I had only one lock of her hair,
We had played in the shallows, kissed under the cliff
As the sun was beginning to set,
I last saw her swimming out there in the rip
And I called her, I'm calling her yet.

The sea became misty, and blurred to my view
But I'd swear it was dotted with sails,
The Spanish Armada, in some misted dew
While the sailors all clung to the rails,
Then Drake and his fire ships sailed in the beams
Of the rays of the sun, bleeding red,
And I watched as the history wrought in that bay
Came as images; danced in my head.

I prayed that my Mirabel send me a sign
That would tell she was waiting down there,
Would send me a messenger, up from the depths
Of that vast, imperturbable lair,
I promised I'd settle, would live out my time
If the message I plainly could see,
Then I'd wait for the ages to send me to rest,
I could live, if my soul was set free.

The sea became rancorous, beat on the shore
And the sky grumbled thunder unseen,
While the lightning crackled its anger to warn
Not to meddle with things that had been.
But Mirabel, heedless of time or the storm
Sent her message to me from afar,
As a line of ghost soldiers appeared on the shore
With their Standards of SPQR.

9 January 2013