Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE TOMB OF GAUGIN, by PIERRE CAMO Poet's Biography First Line: Women of tahiti, when time's pace Last Line: And the infinite love of the archipelago! Subject(s): Death; Graves; Memory; Rest; Women; Dead, The; Tombs; Tombstones | ||||||||
Women of Tahiti, when time's pace Forever under the blue trees has destroyed Your dusky bodies and your pagan grace, Not all will sleep within the shady void. Of those fine faces and those rich, nude forms, Those tresses purple with hibiscus flowers, That gestured welcome where desire swarms And the green and the gold fruit that the hand showers, There will remain enchanting memory Deeply designed, where blending colors smile, And you will live and charm eternally With the displayed and trafficked charm of your flowered isle! You will retain forever your rustic grace, Bronze youth with limbs like supple reeds, Guiding across a shadowed lonely place A troop of red and white native steeds, And all you faces unidentified, Little maids with collars of white jasmine, fair Women seated at the ocean side Under the breadfruit trees and the palms' flare. For the master of features and of fine nuances Has with his faithful brush forever unfurled Your charms, and you symbolize the far romances To us, and the allure of another world. We who would cross all countries to immerse Our questing soul in beauty's flowered breath, We bear today the homage of our verse To the artist sleeping on the bosom of death. He rests in the calm of the distant ocean Where unknown woods and blue gulf waters meet; Around his grave there is no alien motion Save the sea-sound, and the patter of naked feet. Young women, put you on the funeral veil, The purple flowers; taste the honey; bite The golden fruit; the ancestral gift impale, The supreme sacrifice in holy rite. For he in the highest, women of dear delight On the Pacific shores where melting measures flow, Desired your beauty, sumptuous as the night, And the infinite love of the archipelago! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SURVIVOR AMONG GRAVES by RANDALL JARRELL SUBJECTED EARTH by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE GRAVE OF MRS. HEMANS by CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER THOSE GRAVES IN ROME by LARRY LEVIS NOT TO BE DWELLED ON by HEATHER MCHUGH ONE LAST DRAW OF THE PIPE by PAUL MULDOON ETRUSCAN TOMB by JOHN FREDERICK NIMS |
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