Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IMPOROMPTU IN EGO MAJOR, by HARRY ESTY DOUNCE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IMPOROMPTU IN EGO MAJOR, by                    
First Line: To err's divine! The gods came down to teach
Last Line: I'll grub content among autumnal flowers.
Subject(s): Life


PAGAN REFLECTION

To err's divine! The gods came down to teach
Mankind to teach its womankind desire
Is no safe flame that vestals tend, but fire
That counts no mortal fuel out of reach.
When did Apollo sigh or Pan beseech?
Philandering Jove reflect on Juno's ire
Or Love's half-brother reck of Dido's pyre?
And what commandment did the pious preach?
The naked gods are dead -- but now and then
Their godly conduct's copied, gossips say,
In this prim world of starched and tailored men;
I'm sure the gossips lie, for every day
I don most mortal ready-mades, and down
The straight and narrow Subway crawl to town.

BYRONIC MOMENT

Somewhere in all the midnight must be bliss,
Respite at least for fevered men like me
Who thirst until the dawn wind stirs to be
Far from to-day, to-morrow, and from this --
Deep down the Colorado's black abyss,
Out by the star-girt navel of the sea
Or where a stifled spring's one dying tree.
Marks the wide desert's wildest oasis.
Hush, wailing soul! Let slumber take us where
The round world's rim, the moon and the blue night
Will hide inconsequential things that hurt you:
Late suppers, germs, your lifelong ingrained virtue,
Tobacco, violent dreams, the itch to write,
Tall girls like cold young queens with yellow hair.

MIDDLE VICTORIAN REFLECTION

Diane, Diane, in pity's name what matter
When we are dead or soon when we are old
That I was righteous or that you were cold,
That there were eyes to spy and lips to chatter?
What but the cup our hands let slip and shatter,
Your glorious song unsung, my heart untold,
These lines I meant to weave you cloth of gold
Weaving cheap motley, stuff for fools to tatter?
-- I am a fool, Diane, to make false moan.
For you were cold, so, burning, I was mute --
Not wise or righteous! Come, a better thing
That still your song is in you, yet to sing,
And still the hungering heart is mine alone,
And cloth of gold I know for brigand's loot.

LATE VICTORIAN MOMENT

To find the grimmest legend gospel-true
Would be just like my queer luck when I die:
A dour old City Magistrate on high
Dispensing harps and robes, damnation too.
The winged Clerk, ere Peter let me through,
Would search his notes for my dull page and sigh
While jeers would rise from Hell, "Its betters fry
For less than once that white soul failed to do!"
Of Matthew's rulings, Yahveh then might read
The one that ends "already in his heart."
"But only there!" might smoothly special-plead
My mouthpiece Saint, "except in flippant art;
"My innocent client merely looked and flamed----"
Of which now write me, Angel, unashamed!

AND MORNING TUB

Tosh! If the moon's half mad, the sun is sane,
He'll laugh her thin illusion off, and rid
The world and me, as ever his humour did
Of glooms and vapours she pretends are pain.
This tendril now she shows me as a chain,
Those twigs she shadows down, a martyr's grid,
That clod she makes a dead king's pyramid,
Will fade and shrink to trivial facts again.
And I'll shrink too, thank fortune! In my bath
I'll croon no misereres, but will roar
In three wrong keys the lusty "Toreador."
Then meet the sun along the garden path,
Where, laughing with him at these moonstruck hours,
I'll grub content among autumnal flowers.





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