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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NIMROD: 5, by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH Poet's Biography First Line: That night the angels in their citadels Last Line: Ebbed back to silence and eternal calm. Subject(s): Nimrod (bible) | |||
That night the angels in their citadels, The great mild-eyed, whose snow-white innocence Was soft upon them and like plumage deep, Moved forth for pleasure and their gliding step Peacefully on the radiant pavement shone. Their silvery feet like doves beneath the sun With tender pacing bred ethereal sound Which in the melodious substance of the stone Throbbed with the pulse of many an echoing tones As in the sunlight sweetly sunken moons. Some walked in the warm gardens where they ate A placid fruit, milk white, whereof the taste Increased in them their wisdom. With delight Some camped beneath the trees and in deep groves Played secret lovely games that left the air More innocent with mirth. Some from the lips Of Awes and Terrors and Powers and Blazing Thrones Learned that which passeth speech. Some stretched through space Gigantic limbs or plunged into the void To try their strength with nothingness, and some, Through gazing upon beauty having grown Miraculously quiet, wrapt in calm Received the silent ecstasy of sleep. Some, wardens of the barricades, high up Upon the ramparts of God's citadel, Gazed from the parapets and saw how smooth The plains of pure and undisturbed bright thought In shining levels lay 'twixt them and man. But as they gazed upon the eternal ways, Lo, Heaven itself was shaken. Then mid air Was split asunder. Then was the void struck deep With blackened precipices and stern cliffs. Then space was made astonished and was rent. Then dreadful whirlpools of dark, thundering time Swept forth their reeling floods. From jagged steeps Plunged shrieking shapes of stars on fire. Then thought, That once had stretched a lucid interval 'Twixt God and man, convulsed with darkness, broke In fearful chasms, gorges of despair, Fathomless seas, sharp-peaked and distant heights, Sheer walls of distance, deep and echoing flumes, Untrodden plains and jungles of dark air, Where fierce monstrosity and brutish rage Devoured each other. With anguished meteors pained, Eternal hurricanes of grief disturbed The deep arboreal forests of black night. Then struggling up the dark abyss they saw An urgent spirit whose white angelic shape Was poised for an instant on the cliff Of utter darkness, like the morning star; Then plunged again into the black ravine, Then forth once more; then, fearfully obscured, Rushed up through trackless distances, pursued By howling furies; then followed the harsh trail Which skirted the high citadel; then leaped Across the blazing bulwarks, up the heights. So swept among them, of his splendors stripped, Great Nimrod's angel! Anguished, bleeding, bright, Exhausted, beautiful, aggrieved, appalled, He beat the air with large astonished eyes. Then, like a steed gone frantic, forward plunged, And like one burning cast himself abroad. Pale with celestial anguish his body shone Like the white spirit of eternal flame, While wildly throbbing on the angelic stone Spread the crushed splendor of his beaten wings. Then once again he reared himself and stood Enraged and potent with a blazing front And cried with such a voice as shook the air -- "What has been done on earth? What has been thought? What dreamed of? What conceived? How shall I speak, That come as witness to you from that orb Which is man's habitation! With what voice Shall I cast knowledge, howling, through these streets? Shall I confound your presence? With my speech Shall I your bleeding brightness so afflict, Your bodies shall melt forth in tears? Oh ye! Ye Spirits, that dispersed upon the air Feel Nature trembling; Angels, that so close Are driven to one another by the gales Of earthly devastation, ye surge like seas Of troubled radiance; ye august Archangels, That lift complacent, towering in the sun, Your glacier beauty of precipitous wings; Oh ye almighty Thrones whose blazing eyes Breed forth astonishments, dominions, powers; Ye principalities that in the air, Fearfully spread in conflagration bright, Consume the darkness of the void; Ye Wars Beautiful, shaggy, bristling, circumstanced, That ride with thunder and with cohorts vast March forth with Dominations; Oh, all ye Times, Ye fearful Times, ye Half Times! on this day I say man has accomplished a strange thing, And on God's altar there smokes up to Heaven The savor of unnatural deeds. For when At dawn, in Eden, underneath the trees, Eve, slumbering at peace in Adam's arms, Enraptured, docile, in her sleep conceived A dark monstrosity -- direful, new -- Man's disobedience; when fatuous Cain Gazing into his brother's living eyes, With hate ecstatic, first conceived of death; Or when before the flood the sons of men Whored fearfully and of adulterous flesh Bred frightful progeny; I say that then There was a speech in Heaven and it declared Man's dark inventions to the stars. But now What word shall shape before you this new thing? For never yet has man, who fashioneth Great cities and great progenies of dust, Created a new virtue; but his wit Conceives unnatural monsters of misdeed And fierce original crime. I came to him Through skies of lovely thought. Oh, like a star Singing athwart the dawn, I swept the air Of his clean spirit, morning fresh. I came, Beautiful, wrapped in light, beyond all dreaming. What he had not imagined, I shone on him, His own deep Self unutterably real. And in my raiment were his secret dawns. Pale was my substance with the spiritual stars That were the fires of his ancient prayers. My body poised in the air did sing Like silvery strings with music, and he gazed, And knew how beautiful I was and saw His own deep Self, unutterably real, But in his heart preferred an alien thing. Oh, can ye in this citadel conceive What Nimrod plotted? How shall I make plain Without vast ruin blackening these halls His spirit's dark achievement! For he wrought A harsh invention and a blind machine, And from his lips there sped an iron word -- A direful engine that did bring to waste The gardens of his being. Then on his brain Seized black negation. With a staring eye, His thought regarded emptiness. He groaned. Then he stretched forth a groping hand upon Annihilation, and swart nothingness He drew about him with its ancient chill. I saw his senses swim, dizzy as clouds Dispersed upon the ethers of his soul. Then did his mortal presence ail. His flesh Melted upon his bone. His eyelids pale Were cold and sweated heavily. His eyes Started and were astonished. In his breast He felt protesting nature with huge throes Endeavor to escape and leave him strewn, By all the elements cast out. Aghast, His snow-white flesh was shaken like a city That cracks upon the gale ready to fall. And from his deep disease such vapor smoked As if a fire in the groins or breast Were prophesying ruin. Not like a man Turned Nimrod unto me, but some wild shape Reared of disaster, built of empty ash. So sorrowed he before me and with tears Large in his godlike eyes, he gazed at me -- His spirit's Truth -- and groaning heavily, With devastation shaking his huge frame, He spoke forth monstrous syllables and cried What was not true before the Lord; then cast The Word of God upon the barren stone, And from great Nimrod's lips emerged pale death." Then was the silence of that listening host Congealed, as when beneath the Northern blast Deep solemn pools their quietness increase. And stillness lay among their glittering spears Like snow in a deep forest. But once more That Angel lifted up his voice and spoke. "Lo then, I waned from out his mortal sight And sank myself into the golden air That was his spirit -- wherefrom I had dawned, His own deep Self unutterably real. But oh, that world of thought not any more Lay pure, transparent like a shining sky, Betwixt his world and ours. It had grown dark, And on his soul's horizon many shapes Foreboded tempest. Then was split in twain His spiritual earth. Dark gulfs of thought Swallowed up his peaks of radiance. Hideous forests Besieged his intellect with shaggy growth Wherein roved many a wandering, livid beast Of rage and hatred. In the evil air Were floating idiocies and blank despairs, Insanities and disembodied palsies, Fright, and such leprosies as in the waste Of his soul's desert howled among the tombs Or at the town's gate, smelling out the feast, Entered the helpless citadel of flesh. Through these I rushed and from my substance waned The beauty of his spiritual stars, Until the fires of his ancient prayers Seemed almost out. Then did I set my face Against the whirlwinds of his deep despair, His rage, his privy council, his muttering, His peeping spirits perched upon the gale. I rode on Revolutions and I leaped From mammoth time to mammoth time. I clung To gorgeous wheels of cycles and was whirled forth From them into mid air. I sat astride Event and guided it. Over vast plains I drove his chariots of change! Look! Look! Am I not wounded? Am I not aghast? For I have ridden on his soul's eclipse Unto the uttermost reaches of man's thought. A thousand centuries lie beneath my feet -- His own deep Self, unutterably real." Then to the bulwarks that great angel leaped And gazing down into the nether air Lit up the darkness with his blazing eyes. With arms outstretched and with exalted brow, He cried, "Lo now! Upon this town shall fall An ending and a devastating doom! For in its streets and mighty citadel Truth reigns no more. Wherefore no more shall Truth Be its chief servant. Ye doers of foul deeds! Manipulators! Hiders! Plotters of schemes! Runners on dark errands! Creepers on unshod feet! Oh ye that dwell in Babel, breeders of lies! Have ye not heard of that unholy spawn That eateth its progenitors? Lo now! Soon shall ye be devoured. Never more Shall God's high angels lift your mighty walls In their serene great hands. Not any more Shall they upon their shoulders heave your domes! Ye are forsaken utterly. Shake! Shake! Ye mighty citadels! Ye are not built Upon a real foundation. Ye shall sink Amid soft brass and sickly dreaming stone. Fall, ye high towers! Oh all ye constellations Of domes resplendent, like a thousand moons, Ye are eclipsed forever. Ye bright walls, Whose rugged armaments drive against God's hosts, Mailed in magnificence, ye shall be as dust. Oh thou great Babel -- out of nothing reared -- Shake! Crumble utterly! Be thou dismayed! For God is wroth upon you and to Him Thy citadel is as a voice at night -- Thy brazen bastions built of empty wind. Thou art abolished fearfully. His feet Are darkly spread among you. Ye shall go Afflicted and confounded. Ye shall rage In scattered tribes. God's strong and awful wars He will send down upon you. And no man Shall to his brother lift a cry of peace. Words shall be taken from you. On your lips Your utterance shall be confused. Your breath Shall sicken in your nostrils and send forth A stench upon this land. With wailing voices Ye shall breed forth new words and every one Like old death-bearing Cain shall breathe out death. Your tribe henceforth shall speak a various tongue, And there shall be a curse upon your speech." Then from that stellar orb that is the earth, Rose such a lamentation that it vexed The listening brightness of the zodiac. And many a star fell from the sky that night With mortal grief afflicted. Meteor-eyed, Eternity watched a new epoch dawn Upon that furious planet set in time. Then in high heaven all the angelic host, Beating about God's ramparts like a tide, Swelled terrible with glory, and the eyes Of no Archangel could range forth so far As to declare the end of that vast sea. But bright with billowy radiance they heaved Their rugged splendor underneath the sun And surged against the battlements. For, lo! There shot among them fires that were such thoughts As never more should blaze upon the earth, Whose terrible radiance was the garb of speech. Breathed in by Heaven, swept back God's beauteous words To the eternal peace from which they came. Burning, they plunged into the Angel's hands. They sunk their glowing shapes into his brain. They shouted in his thighs, and in his feet Raised paeans of delight until he leaped Before the Lord with prophecy enraged. They foamed upon his brow. They swam serene Through the translucent whiteness of his breast. Amid his spiritual substance, fires shone With moving splendor and interior flame. They made soft music in his throbbing plumes And on his finger tips did sweetly sing. But never more on earth those orbs of light Choired truth along the orbits of man's brain. And with them rushed swart algebras, disturbed From their deep lairs of stone; and numbers swept Their wings from earth until material things Groaned, crumbled, were no more. Swift accuracies, Smooth-limbed and beautiful with flying feet, Fled from their bright abodes of tower and wall And, poised in high air, looked down amazed To see huge towers stricken by their flight; Lines, whirled about the heavenly ramparts, swung From ancient straightness into anguished shapes They had not dreamed of, arcs, and angles strange, And terrible spirals. Many a tortured curve, Unwoven from arch and dome, was stretched in pangs Of pained and frigid straightness. High in air Moved mournful, calm and stern geometries -- Pale priests of space -- that from their ancient hands Loosed the old order and, at God's altars bowed, Laid down their sacrifice of beauty. Then A murmur rose among the radiant ones, And they grew turbulent in Heaven, for lo, The angel had gone down. His terrible wings, That with bright comets bristled as with eyes, Did shake the atmosphere like living wars. Blown through his hair were strong bright meteors Consuming as with flame. His thundering feet Ploughed up the earth till fearfully she rocked And groaned as chaos did of old. His eyes Blazed like volcanoes from pale peaks of air And prophesied destruction. His screaming voice Perched like an eagle on white cliffs of the sky And snatched earth's vision Heavenward. His brow Passed judgment on the universe. His robes With conflagration burned the gale. Oh then There was a cry in Heaven, for all the host Of bright magnificence, with thundering voice, Shouted abroad in Heaven, "Great Babel Falls." Then that bright sea of plunging radiance Ebbed back to silence and eternal calm. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NIMROD: 1 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH NIMROD: 2 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH NIMROD: 3 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH NIMROD: 4 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH NIMROD: 6 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH NIMROD: 7 by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH THE PRIDE OF NIMROD by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES SONGS FOR MY MOTHER: 2. HER HANDS by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH SONGS FOR MY MOTHER: 3. HER WORDS by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH THE MONK IN THE KITCHEN by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH |
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