Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PRELUDE; FOR GEOFFREY GORER, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: When our long sun into the dark had set Last Line: Remakes all things and men in holiness. Subject(s): Death; Graves; Heroism; Dead, The; Tombs; Tombstones; Heroes; Heroines | ||||||||
FOR GEOFFREY GORER WHEN our long sun into the dark had set And made but winter branches of his rays I left my heart. So doth a shadow leave The body when our long dark sun is gone. Now the black chaos of the Polar night Melts in the hearts of the forgotten Dead; The tears turned ice about each loveless head Are changed into bird-plumaged bird-voiced springs And the sap rises like a bird that sings. The cold wind creaking in my plant-shrill blood Seems spring beginning in some earthen bud Though immemorial, the winter's shade Furred my cold blood wherein plant, beast, are laid, In that dark earth from which shall spring the soul As dark and broken hints of sciences Forgotten, and strange satyrine alliances Of beast and soul lie hidden in the old Immensity and desert of the cold. Hoarse as a dog's bark the furled heavy leaves Are hairy as a dog: furred fire barks for the shape Of hoarse-voiced animals; cold air agape Whines to be shut in the water's shape and plumes; All things break from the imprisoning winter's glooms; All things, all hearts awake Until the gold within the miser's heart Would buy the siren isles and many a chart From dream to dream, and the death-blinded eyes See beyond wild bird-winged discoveries. All creatures praise the sun in their degree: The mother bear with thick forestial fur And grumbling footsteps, lumbering primal sleep Of the winter earth, as furry as a bear And grumbling deep, No longer sees her cubs as a black blot As clots of thick black darkness; primal form Is shaped from that thick night Begins from this black chaos: life is light. The stunted long-armed gardener mossed as trees Has known before his birth For he was born and shaped close to the earth Best of all things are water, and hot gold Of the rough fruitful sun: best of all things are these. So the slow gold of his hot days and rays Ripened within our earth and changed to fruits, So the cold twisted water changed to roots Of apple-trees. But I, a harpy like a nightingale, A nightingale that seems a harpy, mourn With my heart changed now from a black blind stone That rolls down the abyss, to a ghost gone Or a black shadow cast Upon the dust where gossips of mean Death The small and gilded scholars of the Fly That feed upon the crowds and their dead breath Still buzz and stink where the bright heroes die Of the dust's rumours and the old world's fevers. Sometimes in the arena like a drum My heart sounds, calls the heroes from their shade Till with the march of tides, those tall ghosts come Where Fortune, Virtue, Folly, Wisdom, these Mimes garbed as aeons, by horizons bound With monstrous trumpetings of suns at war Amid earth-quaking rumour of crowds whispering And bull-voiced bellowings of tropic light Contend... And the huge bulk of Folly fell From her world-height in the arena. Hell Has dyed its fires upon the fairest faces And where the hero smiled, bare Death grimaces. But one who changed the complexion of all nights, Whose lips have fired Persepolis, to me Spoke then of eagle-winged Icarian flights Of the steel men across an ageless sea, And continents and quays where the one nation Of the blind smiling statues still abide Beneath giant suns whose sound no man hath known. And huge horizons and the enchanted tide, The azure unattainable and wide, These they have known, and in their marble veins Are all the summer sorrow of the rose, And siren waves. In the agonic noon When the black pyres and pyramids of shade Are mute as solemn and revengeful ghosts Left from the tombs of night, I, a ghost laid, Walk like a ghost among the city ways, Pressed on by hungry continents of stone. Yet still the light brings life to those unborn And still the statues hear the sirens' song Across the deep-boughed gardens of the sea. Where the first founts and the deep waterways Of the young light flow down and lie like peace Upon the upturned faces of the blind, The crooked has a shadow light makes straight, The shallow places gain their depth again, It comes to bless; And man-made chasms between man and man Of creeds and tongues are filled. The guiltless light Remakes all things and men in holiness. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON NOTES FOR AN ELEGY by WILLIAM MEREDITH THE EROTICS OF HISTORY by EAVAN BOLAND A SONG FOR HEROES by EDWIN MARKHAM AFTER THE BROKEN ARM by RON PADGETT EXAMINATION OF THE HERO IN A TIME OF WAR by WALLACE STEVENS AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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