Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE POET, AND HIS INTERPRETERS, by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON Poet's Biography First Line: Full of songs he woke one morning Last Line: In the years when they were married. Alternate Author Name(s): Leigh, Arbor; Guggenberger, Mrs. Ignatz; Bevington, L. S. Subject(s): Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
FULL of songs he woke one morning, Every song a weighty wonder Holding universal being Newly dressed in words of thunder. "Men shall hear me; men shall listen Through my song-speech sweetly seeing, All the growing glory glisten Spread abroad in boundless being. Spread yet centred, knit yet flowing, Constancy in revolution: Still yet deathless; gliding, growing, And its new name -- Evolution. 'Tis because the truth is tortured, Tinged by times and moods and manners, Men reject the life of living, Write large lies upon their banners; And with hearts all mad with yearning For a good they know not missing, The inspiring essence spurning, Toil and die without possessing. I will bring them truth ungarbled, Strike aside distorting lenses, Methods, morals, metaphysics, Things and thoughts, and souls and senses. I will show a mighty oneness, Every life-law underlying, Make as nought the tyrant idols, Give men hope for living, dying. What can cure their mad emotion, Yet not kill it in the curing? How the voice of pain be silenced, While the voice of joy enduring? What can wrench the sting from living With a knowledge of a dying? What avail the heat of question If there never come replying? What? -- until the roots of sadness, Pressed too hard of life, grow rotten; Till in grander grown emotion Self die down and be forgotten. I will make men's hearts grow eager In the cause of law's own essence, They shall fall in love with nature With a passioned acquiescence. Till there shall be but one sorrow That can set the soul a-sighing; Ignorance of law, or error In its incomplete applying." So the Poet set him thinking! He would let no present blind him To the tending of the future: And he left a book behind him. And the crowd went blindly onward, Loving, hating, asking, solving; And the little planet bore them Through the days and nights revolving. While the poem of the Poet Waited praise that none would render; Raised the bitter smile of cynic, Set pain throbbing through the tender. Till a little girl of twenty, Full of reverence for sages, Found the book and called her lover, And they cut the yellow pages. And they found a gem within it In the musical May weather, With their young hands intertwining And their young cheeks pressed together. For with loving hearts made gentle They divined a holy meaning: Not in vain the Poet's sowing Since these joyed so in the gleaning. Where the page was blank and yellow, Of love's own untaught providing, There they read a text and moral That should serve their love for guiding. And the Poet won his laurels Though so long his fame had tarried, For they told their babies of him In the years when they were married. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB EGOISME A DEUX' by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON |
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