12 DECEMBER 1952, Page 28

The Senator

The painted tribesmen stared at him with wonder As they saw him walking in the gardens alone, Or sipping white wine on his prim Roman verandah Among the statues and the urns of stone.

When the world broke he wrote formal classical verses Or a long Ciceronian letter to a friend And never suspected how thriftless time disperses The jewels imperial tributaries send.

We must think that an ode of Horace meant more to him Than the sudden assassination of a long-haired king, That, by the testimony of those that knew him, He was something both of a scholar and a sage, And in his nostalgia and vain imagining Flared as a beacon in a barbarous age.

ANTHONY HARTLEY.