Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PROFFERED CUP, by MARY SINTON LEITCH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PROFFERED CUP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Last night across the meadows of a dream
Last Line: And so . . . Still singing . . . Passed into the night.
Subject(s): Cups; Dreams; Fountain Of Youth; Immortality; Sacrifices; Nightmares


Last night across the meadows of a dream
Youth came to me; her gay, expectant eyes
Were eager and her voice mellifluous
As bells that ring in legendary lands
Unknown of grief, impenetrate to pain.
She held a brimming cup and bade me, "Take,
Drink, and the years -- the cruel, gradual years --
That cast their shadows now upon your heart
Shall be no more; your past shall be no more --
Nor any past, save as an old wives' tale
Mumbled before the fire; the future only
Is, and is yours, each hour an opening rose
Filled with the fragrance of young, sweet desire."

I took the chalice with a trembling hand.
To walk where lilies lean to kiss the cheek! --
Where neither empty nest nor barren bough
May rob the woods of melody and bloom,
For cold December snows shall break and foam
In April blossoms and within my breast
A thrush shall sing perpetually of June.
Youth! Youth! I lifted high the proffered cup.
But as the bubbles broke against my lips,
The spirit of my vanished years, enwound
In scarves of vapor, broideries of the moon,
Issued from darkness. Her autumnal eyes,
Though they were sad, yet held a tender radiance
And on her sober brow a jewel glowed
And gleamed with inextinguishable light.
I waited hesitant, and now her voice
Though low and sweet, filled all the silences
Of mist and moonlight: --

"Would you forfeit then
The more humane, more exorable mind
The years have shaped within you, the more ruthful,
Forbearing heart, the wisdom that, though dim,
Unsure, was wrought of travail and despair
In lonely vigil -- wisdom that has made
Your hand more swift to raise than to cast down,
Has gentled your young cruelty to kindness?

"Can you endure to yield your sorrows up --
Bid them begone that are as dear as joys,
Nay, dearer, as a house whose walls transmute
The echoes of lost laughter into weeping
Is dearer than one empty of grief and pain?

"And what of love, the pitiful, the blind
Young love of frail and perishable flesh
Whose iridescent wings -- too weak to mount
Up to the skies -- lose all their purple and gold
If but one cloud drift grey across the sun?
Will such a love suffice you once again --
You who have known a passion that can rise
On steady pinions high above the storm
In a large rapture of serenity?

"And will you lose again your fathers' God! --
Stand helpless by and see him slowly pass
Through grey Gethsemane, up the lonely hill,
To vanish in the darkness of the cross?
Have you forgot that agony? -- forgot
How heavy were the years you cried aloud
To empty skies, till beauty bade you seek
In rose and rue the vision of his grace
Who is the living God of loveliness?

"Again to tremble at mortality,
Wondering . . . fearing . . . hoping . . . my lips that laugh,
My eyes that glow, my rounded limbs that run
Up April hills -- not these can come to dust!
You will crawl cringing to the knees of Death
Nor dare to look upon his face lest ruin
Stare out of empty sockets; -- you who have learned
To call him friend, to see within his eyes
Wisdom and pity and beneficence!"

So spoke the spirit of my vanished years
The while Youth stood unheeding by and wove
Garlands of daisies.
"Say no more!" I cried
And flung the chalice from me. On the night
It streamed in lucent splendor of the moon,
Then falling, all the crystal fragments made
A firmament of shattered hopes and dreams
Among the flowers and grasses. Now regret
Clutched at my throat, but soft across my heart
Drifted a scent from gardens of the years
Mellow with memories, tender with the dew
Of tears upon them. Comforted I stood --
The spirit of the past encircling me
With strong, compassionate arms -- and watched bright Youth
Turn slowly from me, weaving her crown of May.
Into the mist whose moon-engoldened wings
Caressed her and enfolded her she went,
Singing a song careless and piercing sweet . . .
And so . . . still singing . . . passed into the night.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net