"This school he held his art and epitaph.
But now it takes from him his name,
Falls open like a dishonest look,
And shows us rotted and endowed,
Its senile pleasure."
One of the local gentry of a nearby university fades into obsolescence. Once proud of his education and contribution to the school, now he is embarrassed to learn the university has since condemned him. They have removed the values he stood for from their curriculum and also removed his epitaph.
"Where, on their separate hill, the colleges,
Like manor houses of an older law,
Gaze down embankments on a land in fee"
Shapiro makes the point that many colleges of the south appear to be laid apart from their cities and town respectively. They were built on hills, in an arrogant kind of superiority. He sees hypocrisy and obsolescence in their construction and instruction to this day.
"A gutter of poetry flowed outside the yard,
Making me think I was a bird of prose"
Strolling through this remote garden, Shapiro becomes caught up in the moment. His poetry comes to mind easily, as if it were his only function, his one design. The words become one and the same with the flowers he sees, encompassing a dream-like state of ecstasy.
"Yet you who saved neither yourselves nor us
Are equally with those those who shed the blood
The heroes of our cause. Your conscience is
What we come back to in armistice."
This soldier is the one who does not agree with violence, but he is still subject to the violence of war. Although he is condemned by his fellow soldier, he is praised in time of peace again. He has contributed just as much and remained true to his conscience the entire time.
