25 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 15

The Roman Villa

Here, where we found a broken pot, A handful of blue, splintered tiles, A Roman sat, and saw around

His Samian vase, his well-loved scroll Of Pliny, and the silver lamp That time has blackened and decayed.

No one knows the flower and leaf That curled around his windows here, No one can find the face he loved In the stone coffin or the urn, Only, as standing here, in the field Where the rough turf alone marks out The walls which grass and nettle hid, Feel in the air the warmer sense Of where a man once lived and died, Of where fires burnt, and food smelt good, And someone lived, and touched with mild Fingers the warm flesh shrunken now to bone.

MARGARET STANLEI(AVRENCII