Classic and Contemporary Poetry
YOUTH, by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN Poet's Biography First Line: Out of the spacious east of life Last Line: And showering storms of glory o'er the beaten way. Subject(s): Innocence; Memory; Youth | ||||||||
Out of the spacious east of life Streams the clear dawn of youth's fair days, The matin song and gracious ways Of the sweet prime whose memory plays Across the soul's long gaze Like far off boreal splendours rife With aureoles in northern skies, Where the white wold lies Illimitable to heaven's myriad eyes In the waste night's immensities. Out of those auroral hours, Like perfume of far flowers Borne by the flagging breeze O'er intervening leas Of barrenness, that fragrant prime Comes borne sweet through wastes of time Across wide plunging seas From morn's Hesperides; Ere youth with innocence sublime Had left the golden clime Of his fair matin, keen to sail His slender shallop to the leaping gale. Fair through the after years, Across wide chasms swollen with storm And dimmed with mists of tears, Gleams the soft radiance of the form That youth had builded fair Out of the impalpable air Of serenest hope, Before life learned to grope Amid the sombre bosks of melancholic care. Whiter than the mountained snow, Brighter than the crystal glow Of virgin sunlight yet unkist By grosser air to amethyst, That lambent radiance sent Its paradisial rays through all life's firmament: Earth felt its lucent heat Flood her central seat, And her breast replete With its soft warmth grew sweet With fragrance of the bud Reddening to flower upon her blood; While from the glowing sphere Of the overhanging year Meting with variant sisterhood Of changeful moons the moving season's mood, Rolled virgin hymnals all unheard, Save by youth's spirit stirred To catch the diviner word Angelically murmured; For the heart of youth alone May catch the ethereal tone Of heaven's unseen zone, Youth that looks with eyes Seeing only paradise In earth's wide visibilities, Nor yet has learned the curse That locks in death the glittering universe. Then were all things true, Time all sweets, nor any rue Within Life's spacious garden grew; There youth elate Held royal state, The smiling monarch of obedient fate; While throned in every eye Honour beamed resplendent sanctity; And there Eve's gracious power, The garden's golden dower, As the virgin moon, Night's chaste plenilune, Lifts the vast sea's heaving flood, Drew all life's tides to noble womanhood, For all was fair and all was good. Reign, then, Youth's Memory; Let me your captive be, And reap felicity In the far distant gleam Of that pure matin dream Before the hour of ruth, When all was sooth In one harmonious round Of diapasoned sound In the full orbit of unsullied youth. For now, alas! is lost the gift Of paradise, and leap the swift Raucous years headlong Tumbled and broke among The splintering rocks, Where time's river shocks Against the bitter sea Of eternity. I would return to thee, Season of innocence And that fresh joy, whence Sounded clear the sweet accord Of life's primeval word, Deep music in far places stirred, When heavenly fingers swept the trembling chord For it is this That makes the bliss Of youth, and renders fair, To the wide eyes of innocence, All the ambient air Of dawn in that intense Clear light, Burning a rose white In the eternal morn beyond eclipse of night, And, breaking through The darkened circle of our blue, Flashes in the eyes Of youth with fires of paradise; This the secret power That clothes all earth with flower Of beauty seen Only in the sheen Of that deep vision Of the pure elysian, Caught by the white soul of youth, The unflecked mirror of the sun of truth, Caught and given forth again Into the blinded eyes of men, Beauty's own celestial ray Blotting out the light of common day, And showering storms of glory o'er the beaten way. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BETWEEN THE WARS by ROBERT HASS THE GOLDEN SHOVEL by TERRANCE HAYES ALONG WITH YOUTH by ERNEST HEMINGWAY THE BLACK RIVIERA by MARK JARMAN A FABLE FOR LYDIA by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN |
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