Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DARTMOOR: SUNSET AT CHAGFORD: HOMO LOQVITUR, by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN Poet's Biography First Line: Is it ironical, a fool enigma Last Line: Nor even dying. Alternate Author Name(s): Brown, T. E. Subject(s): Evening; Life; Mankind; Surgery; Sunset; Twilight; Human Race | ||||||||
Is it ironical, a fool enigma, This sunset show? The purple stigma, Black mountain cut upon a saffron glow -- Is it a mammoth joke, A riddle put for me to guess, Which having duly honoured, I may smoke, And go to bed, And snore, Having a soothing consciousness Of something red? Or is it more? Ah, is it, is it more? A dole, perhaps? The scraps Tossed from the table of the revelling gods? -- What odds! I taste them -- Lazarus Was nourished thus! But, all the same, it surely is a cheat -- Is this the stuff they eat? A cheat! a cheat! Then let the garbage be -- Some pig-wash! let it vanish down the sink Of night! 'tis not for me. I will not drink Their draff, While, throned on high, they quaff The fragrant sconce -- Has Heaven no cloaca for the nonce? Say 'tis an anodyne -- It never shall be mine. I want no opiates -- The best of all their cates Were gross to balk the meanest sense; I want to be co-equal with their fates; I will not be put off with temporal pretence: I want to be awake, and know, not stand And stare at waving of a conjuror's hand. But is it speech Wherewith they strive to reach Our poor inadequate souls? The round earth rolls; I cannot hear it hum -- The stars are dumb -- The voices of the world are in my ear A sensuous murmur. Nothing speaks But man, my fellow -- him I hear, And understand; but beasts and birds And winds and waves are destitute of words. What is the alphabet The gods have set? What babbling! what delusion! And in these sunset tints What gay confusion! Man prints His meaning, has a letter Determinate. I know that it is better Than all this cumbrous hieroglyph -- The For, the If Are growth of man's analysis: The gods in bliss Scrabble a baby-jargon on the skies For us to analyse! Cumbrous? nay, idiotic -- A party-coloured symbolism, The fragments of a shivered prism: Man gives the swift demotic. 'Tis good to see The economy Of poor upstriving man! Since time began, He has been sifting The elements; while God, on chaos drifting, Sows broadcast all His stuff. Lavish enough, No doubt; but why this waste? See! of these very sunset dyes The virgin chaste Takes one, and in a harlot's eyes Another rots. They go by billion billions: Each blade of grass Ignores them as they pass; The spiders in their foul pavilions, Behold this vulgar gear, And sneer; Dull frogs In bogs Catch rosy gleams through rushes, And know that night is near; Wrong-headed thrushes Blow bugles to it; And a wrong-headed poet Will strut, and strain the cogs Of the machine, he blushes To call his Muse, and maunder; And, marvellous to relate! These pseudo-messengers of state Will wander Where there is no intelligence to meet them, Nor even a sensorium to greet them. The very finest of them Go where there's nought to love them Or notice them: to cairns, to rocks Where ravens nurse their young, To mica-splints from granite-boulders wrung By channels of the marsh, to stocks Of old dead willows in a pool as dead. Can anything be said To these? The leech Looks from its muddy lair, And sees a silly something in the air -- Call you this speech? O God, if it be speech, Speak plainer, If Thou would'st teach That I shall be a gainer! The age of picture-alphabets is gone: We are not now so weak; We are too old to con The horn-book of our youth. Time lags -- O, rip this obsolete blazon into rags! And speak! O, speak! But, if I be a spectacle In Thy great theatre, then do Thy will: Arrange Thy instruments with circumspection; Summon Thine angels to the vivisection! But quick! O, quick! For I am sick, And very sad. Thy pupils will be glad. "See,' Thou exclaim'st, "this ray! How permanent upon the retina! How odd that purple hue! The pineal gland is blue. I stick this probe In the posterior lobe -- Behold the cerebellum A smoky yellow, like old vellum! Students will please observe The structure of the optic nerve. See! nothing could be finer -- That film of pink Around the hippocampus minor. Behold! I touch it, and it turns bright gold. Again! -- as black as ink. Another lancet -- thanks! That's Manx -- Yes, the delicate pale sea-green Passing into ultra-marine -- A little blurred -- in fact This brain seems packed With sunsets. Bring That battery here; now put your Negative pole beneath the suture -- That's just the thing. Now then the other way -- I say! I say! More chloroform! (A little more will do no harm) Now this is the most instructive of all The phenomena; what in fact we may call The most obvious justification Of vivisection in general. Observe (once! twice! That's very nice) -- Observe, I say, the incipient relation Of a quasi-moral activity To this physical agitation! Of course, you see. . . . Yes, yes, O God, I feel the prod Of that dissecting knife. Instructive, say the pupil angels, very: And some take notes, and some take sandwiches and sherry; And some are prying Into the very substance of my brain -- I feel their fingers! (My life! my life!) Yes, yes! it lingers! The sun, the sun -- Go on! go on! Blue, yellow, red! But please remember that I am not dead, Nor even dying. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOW MUCH EARTH by PHILIP LEVINE THE SHEEP IN THE RUINS by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH THE CONQUERORS by PHYLLIS MCGINLEY THE MARMOZET by HILAIRE BELLOC MEN, WOMEN, AND EARTH by ROBERT BLY BROTHERS: 3. AS FOR MYSELF by LUCILLE CLIFTON A SERMON AT CLEVEDON; GOOD FRIDAY by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN |
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