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Crazed through much child-bearing

The moon is staggering in the sky;

Moon-struck by the despairing

Glances of her wandering eye

We grope, and grope in vain,

For children born of her pain.

Children dazed or dead!

When she in all her virginal pride

First trod on the mountain's head

What stir ran through the countryside

Where every foot obeyed her glance!

What manhood led the dance!

Fly-catchers of the moon,

Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem

But slender needles of bone;

Blenched by that malicious dream

They are spread wide that each

May rend what comes in reach.

COMMENTS

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Dragonrouge
01:40 Jan 24 2012

Exquisite!

Reminded me of Elend:

"Night-moths on her wings... A staggering moon!"

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POST COMMENT

Blessed be this place,

More blessed still this tower;

A bloody, arrogant power

Rose out of the race

Uttering, mastering it,

Rose like these walls from these

Storm-beaten cottages --

In mockery I have set

A powerful emblem up,

And sing it rhyme upon rhyme

In mockery of a time

HaIf dead at the top.

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's

An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the

sun's journey and the moon's;

And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers

he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare

This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my

ancestral stair;

That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke

have travelled there.

Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind

Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had

dragged him down into mankind,

Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his

mind,

And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a

tree,

That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-

tury after century,

Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;

And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a

dream,

That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its

farrow that so solid seem,

Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its

theme;



Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,

The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-

mity of its own desire;

Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual

fire.

III

The purity of the unclouded moon

Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.

Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,

The blood of innocence has left no stain.

There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood

Soldier, assassin, executioner.

Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear

Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,

But could not cast a single jet thereon.

Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!

And we that have shed none must gather there

And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.



IV

Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,

And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,

Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,

A couple of night-moths are on the wing.

Is every modern nation like the tower,

Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,

For wisdom is the property of the dead,

A something incompatible with life; and power,

Like everything that has the stain of blood,

A property of the living; but no stain

Can come upon the visage of the moon

When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night

doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,

and he, as long as she is in sight,

with his full tide is ready here to honor;



But when the silver waggon of the Moon

is mounted up so high he cannot follow,

the sea calls home his crystal waves to morn,

and with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.



So you that are sovereign of my heart

have all my joys attending on your will,

when you return, their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come and as you depart,

joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.



(1608)

I saw thee once- once only- years ago:

I must not say how many- but not

many.

It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon, that like thine own

soul soaring,

Sought a precipitate pathway up through

heaven,

There fell a silvery silken veil of light,

With quietude, and sultriness and

slumber,

Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on

tiptoe-

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these

roses

That gave out, in return for the love-

light,

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic

death-

Fell on the upturned faces of these

roses

That smiled and died in this parterre,

enchanted

by thee, and by the poetry of thy

presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half-reclining; while the

moon

Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,

And on thine own, upturn'd- alas, in

sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July mid-

night-

Was it not Fate (whose name is also

Sorrow),

That bade me pause before that garden-

gate,

To breathe the incense of those slum-

bering roses?

No footstep stirred: the hated world

all slept,

Save only thee and me. I paused- I

looked-

And in an instant all things disap-

peared.

(Ah, bear in mind this garden was

enchanted!)

The pearly lustre of the moon went

out:

The mossy banks and the meandering

paths,

The happy flowers and the repining

trees,

Were seen no more: the very roses'

odours

Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

All- all expired save thee- save less

than thou:

Save only the devine light in thine

eyes.

I saw but them- they were the world

to me.

I saw but them- saw only them for

hours-

Saw only them till the moon went

down.

What wild heart-histories seemed to lie

enwritten

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!

How dark a woe! yet how sublime a

hope!

How silently serene a sea of pride!

How adoring an ambition! yet how

deep-

How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank

from sight,

Into the western couch of a thunder-cloud;

And thou, a ghost, amid entombing

trees

Didst glide away. only thine eyes

Remained.

They would not go- they never yet

have gone.

Lighting my lonely pathway home that

night,

They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.

They follow me- they lead me through

the years.

They are my ministers- yet I their

slave.

Their office is to illuminate and enkindle-

My duty, to be saved by their bright

light

And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which

is Hope.)

And are far up in Heaven- the stars

I kneel to

In the sad, slient watches of my night;

While even in the meridian glare of day

I see them still- two sweetly scintillant

Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,

And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;

While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress

Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;



As on a crest above her silken avalanche,

Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,

And sees a pallid vision everywhere she’d glance,

In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.



When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere

She might permit herself to sheda furtive tear,

A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,



Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,

An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;

Within his heart, far from the sun, it’s buried deep.

COMMENTS

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Dragonrouge
10:45 Jan 09 2012

Visual poetry response



Musical poetry response



One of my favorite poems!

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POST COMMENT

BUSH and vale thou fill'st again



With thy misty ray,

And my spirit's heavy chain



Castest far away.



Thou dost o'er my fields extend



Thy sweet soothing eye,

Watching like a gentle friend,



O'er my destiny.



Vanish'd days of bliss and woe



Haunt me with their tone,

Joy and grief in turns I know,



As I stray alone.



Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!



Ne'er can I be gay!

Thus have sport and kisses gone,



Truth thus pass'd away.



Once I seem'd the lord to be



Of that prize so fair!

Now, to our deep sorrow, we



Can forget it ne'er.



Murmur, stream, the vale along,



Never cease thy sighs;

Murmur, whisper to my song



Answering melodies!



When thou in the winter's night



Overflow'st in wrath,

Or in spring-time sparklest bright,



As the buds shoot forth.



He who from the world retires,



Void of hate, is blest;

Who a friend's true love inspires,



Leaning on his breast!



That which heedless man ne'er knew,



Or ne'er thought aright,

Roams the bosom's labyrinth through,



Boldly into night.



(1789)

What counsel has the hooded moon

Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,

Of Love in ancient plenilune,

Glory and stars beneath his feet -- -

A sage that is but kith and kin

With the comedian Capuchin?



Believe me rather that am wise

In disregard of the divine,

A glory kindles in those eyes

Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!

No more be tears in moon or mist

For thee, sweet sentimentalist.