POETIC INQUIRY (update)

Ilion, along whose streets in olden days

Shone that divinest form, for whose sweet face

A monarch sire, with all his kingly race,

Were too content to let their temples blaze—

Where art thou now?—no massive columns raise

Their serried shafts to heaven; we may not trace

Xanthus and Simois, nor each storied place

Round which poetic memory fondly plays.

But in the verse of the old man divine

Thy windy towers are built eternally;

Nor shall the ages, as they ruin by,

Print on thy bulwarks one decaying sign;

So true is beauty clothed in endless rhyme,

So false the sensual monuments of time. 

 

 

The first line as well as a few following are explaining Ilion, which is the antiquated name for Troy. (seen in the title "Iliad" written by Homer). In the lines starting with "Were" it shows That Troy had been sacked and the monarch was too idle to care. Pops the question "where is troy now" to show that there are no more massive columns left. That either; Xanthus Spur on the Trojan Range, mountain range in the Palmer Archipelago of the British Antarctic Territory, or or Xanthos, city in ancient Lycia,have been destroyed, and Simois, or Simoeis as it he is called, as he is a god of a river pledged to help troy in the Trojan war. Then it goes on to show how its beauty will never fade yadda yadda as it goes through time it may fade, but its glory will not.

Homer, By Henry Alford was a nice example for my big question, which I have now re purposed to be; Is time a canvas, or the paint in which the universe is written? It fits into the frame of how time decays and molds perception as it goes. It fits into the idea that the perception of time can be taken in many ways, and is practically ambiguous by nature. 

 

Poem courtesy of http://www.sonnets.org/.