Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CHINESE PROCESSION, by WITTER BYNNER Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Elaborate procession! Some one dead Last Line: With the deathless laughters, the forgotten gods. Alternate Author Name(s): Morgan, Emanuel Subject(s): Sonnet (as Literary Form) | ||||||||
OUT OF PEKING Elaborate procession! Some one dead, The red insignia topping many a pole, Comes through an arch in China, charioted By shuffling men, each with as much of soul As haunted yesterday this body borne Across the desert mounds out of Peking. His hired mourners, ragged and forlorn, But still alive, pass, with the wind of spring, A fallen temple. And beyond the gate I see the remnants of five broken gods, Unroofed, untended now, grown desolate And harsh with posturing mud and iron rods And ends of straw. Am I as dead as they, Or shall newer gods arise from this old clay? BY THE LAKE The quiet dead are their own sanctuary, And mine as well, from life and living men. Doubtful of other gods, I bow the knee, Before the vaulted universe again, To all the anointed: to a little tree, Whose leafage by the lake becomes a store Of young and ardent anonymity, Where virtue is not virtue any more; To the brook that by no toilful agony Is risen round my feet, but by a rain High on the mountain, as unknown to me As dead men having nothing to explain. Yet, had they never lived, would they be dead, Or I have thought at all what I have said? ON MOKANSHAN Where marble fragments of imperial time Lie now with any stone in Peking's wall, I saw a severed dragon try to climb Against his degradation. Stupas, tall In honorable days, lay passive there, Dipping their horizontal victories, Whose lost inscriptions were the futile care Of builders of such monuments as these. But here am I, alive, on Mokanshan, Where rainbow arches, pinnacled with cloud, Erect a wall and roof more honoring man Than any tomb the heavens have allowed, And fill the air with tablets of the pride Of all the living men who ever died. THROUGH THE BAMBOO Rain comes abrupt, but undisturbing, here, Blown through the bamboo circle of my nook. And opening my eyes, I close my book, Perceiving some things dark and others clear. Here, in a world of ardors overcast And cooled again, a breath of dawns uncaught Has touched me to the very root, and brought The future raining on the gathered past. I put away my book of ancient men, Whose leaves were blown and wet with dropping tears Instead of with this rainfall that endears The whole young earth. And I am new again -- As if an opening tender leaf could sing The multitude of leaves that make the spring. INTO SPACE The rain has ended. Tiny moths and swallows And poising dragon-flies flit one by one Before a long processional that follows Of all the dynasties under the sun. I watch the Tatars and the Mongols pass; The Mings, the Manchus, and the Japanese; And then the Europeans; and then, alas! Even Americans go by like these. And, later, shadowy things, before my eyes, File among twinkling willows into space, Leaving the swallows and the dragon-flies And tiny moths and me to run our race As ever, at the ends of periods, With the deathless laughters, the forgotten gods. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WAS THAT REALLY A SONNET? by ANSELM HOLLO RETICENT SONNET by ANNE CARSON SONNET: OF THREE GIRLS AND OF THEIR TALK by GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO WHAT THE SONNET IS by EUGENE JACOB LEE-HAMILTON ON A MAGAZINE SONNET by RUSSELL HILLARD LOINES THE HOUSE OF LIFE: THE SONNET (INTRODUCTION) by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A BUFFALO DANCE AT SANTO DOMINGO by WITTER BYNNER |
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