Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SOULS LAKE, by ROBERT STUART FITZGERALD Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The evergreen shadow and the pale magnolia Last Line: And infinite still the discourse of the night. Subject(s): Night; Solitude; Bedtime; Loneliness | ||||||||
The evergreen shadow and the pale magnolia Stripping slowly to the air of May Stood still in the night of the honey trees. At rest above a star pool with my friends, Besides that grove most fit for elegies, I made my phrase to out-enchant the night. The epithalamion, the hush were due, For I had fasted and gone blind to see What night might be beyond our passages; Those stars so chevalier in fearful heaven Could not but lay their steel aside and come With a grave glitter into my low room. Vague though the population of the earth Lay stretched and dry below the cypresses, It was not round-about but in my night, Bone of my bone, as an old man would say; And all its stone weighed my mortality; The pool would be my body and my eyes, The air my garment and material Whereof that wateriness and mirror lived -- The colorable, meek and limpid world, Though I had sworn my element alien To the pure mind of night, the cold princes, Behold them there, and both worlds were the same. The heart's planet seemed not so lonely then, Seeing what kin it found in that reclining. And ah, though sweet the catch of your chorales, I heard no singing there among my friends; But still were the great waves, the lions shining, And infinite still the discourse of the night. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN ABEYANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV IN A VACANT HOUSE by PHILIP LEVINE SUNDAY ALONE IN A FIFTH FLOOR APARTMENT, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS by WILLIAM MATTHEWS SILENCE LIKE COOL SAND by PAT MORA THE HONEY BEAR by EILEEN MYLES |
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