Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE METEMPSYCHOSIS, by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Above the petty passions of the crowd Last Line: The catacombs and fragments of old worlds. Subject(s): Future Life; Retribution; Eternity; After Life | ||||||||
ABOVE the petty passions of the crowd I stand in frozen marble like a god, Inviolate, and ancient as the moon. The thing I am, and not the thing Man is, Fills my deep dreaming. Let him moan and die; For he is dust that shall be laid again: I know my own creation was divine. Strewn on the breezy continents I see The veined shells and burnished scales which once Enclosed my being -- husks that had their use; I brood on all the shapes I must attain Before I reach the Perfect, which is God, And dream my dream, and let the rabble go; For I am of the mountains and the sea, The deserts, and the caverns in the earth, The catacombs and fragments of old worlds. I was a spirit on the mountain-tops, A perfume in the valleys, a simoom On arid deserts, a nomadic wind Roaming the universe, a tireless Voice. I was ere Romulus and Remus were; I was ere Nineveh and Babylon; I was, and am, and evermore shall be, Progressing, never reaching to the end. A hundred years I trembled in the grass, The delicate trefoil that muffled warm A slope on Ida; for a hundred years Moved in the purple gyre of those dark flowers The Grecian women strew upon the dead. Under the earth, in fragrant glooms, I dwelt; Then in the veins and sinews of a pine On a lone isle, where, from the Cyclades, A mighty wind, like a leviathan, Ploughed through the brine, and from those solitudes Sent Silence, frightened. To and fro I swayed, Drawing the sunshine from the stooping clouds. Suns came and went, and many a mystic moon, Orbing and waning, and fierce meteors, Leaving their lurid ghosts to haunt the night. I heard loud voices by the sounding shore, The stormy sea-gods, and from fluted conchs Wild music, and strange shadows floated by, Some moaning and some singing. So the years Clustered about me, till the hand of God Let down the lightning from a sultry sky, Splintered the pine and split the iron rock; And from my odorous prison-house a bird, I in its bosom, darted: so we flew, Turning the brittle edge of one high wave, Island and tree and sea-gods left behind! Free as the air from zone to zone I flew, Far from the tumult to the quiet gates Of daybreak; and beneath me I beheld Vineyards, and rivers that like silver threads Ran through the green and gold of pasture-lands, And here and there a hamlet, a white rose, And here and there a city, whose slim spires And palace-roofs and swollen domes uprose Like scintillant stalagmites in the sun; I saw huge navies battling with a storm By ragged reefs along the desolate coasts, And lazy merchantmen, that crawled, like flies, Over the blue enamel of the sea To India or the icy Labradors. A century was as a single day. What is a day to an immortal soul? A breath, no more. And yet I hold one hour Beyond all price -- that hour when from the sky I circled near and nearer to the earth, Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream, That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals, Fled through the briony, and with a shout Leapt headlong down a precipice; and there, Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine, Wandered a woman more divinely shaped Than any of the creatures of the air, Or river-goddesses, or restless shades Of noble matrons marvellous in their time For beauty and great suffering; and I sung, I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams, and then Down from the dewy atmosphere I stole And nestled in her bosom. There I slept From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn -- A mystical forewarning! When the stream, Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut boughs The fruit dropt noiseless through the autumn night, I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do: We weep when we are born, not when we die! So was it destined; and thus came I here To walk the earth and wear the form of Man, To suffer bravely as becomes my state, One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God. And knowing these things, can I stoop to fret, And lie, and haggle in the market-place, Give dross for dross, or everything for naught? No! let me stand above the crowd, and sing, Waiting with hope for that miraculous change Which seems like sleep; and though I waiting starve, I cannot kiss the idols that are set By every gate, in every street and park; I cannot fawn, I cannot soil my soul; For I am of the mountains and the sea, The deserts, and the caverns in the earth, The catacombs and fragments of old worlds. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IKON: THE HARROWING OF HELL by DENISE LEVERTOV LEEK STREET by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR UNABLE TO FIND by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR THE AFTERLIFE: LETTER TO STEPHEN DOBYNS 3 by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE AFTERLIFE: LETTER TO STEPHEN DOBYNS: 1 by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE AFTERLIFE: LETTER TO STEPHEN DOBYNS: 2 by HAYDEN CARRUTH WRITING IN THE AFTERLIFE by BILLY COLLINS AFTER THE RAIN by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AN ALPINE PICTURE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH AN ODE ON THE UNVEILING OF THE SHAW MEMORIA BOSTON COMMON, MAY 31, 1897 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |
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