Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COLORADO, by ROBERT STUART FITZGERALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COLORADO, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now the plains come to adore the mountain wall
Last Line: Part in the swaying and tranquil grandeur here.
Subject(s): Memory


Now the plains come to adore the mountain wall,
Their yellow fields running and bowing like waves
To celebrate in such serene order the fire
And love that bore these stony things. Now fragile
Air, sweet health of a superficial season
Garland a while the majesty of winter.

And I, not long nor with profit hereabouts,
Note merely the blue, the watercolor blue
A descriptive man would like; the rare
And rifted shadowline of trees, the smooth
Peaks too cold for the warm west to redden,
Much, or gild them. They remain sharply vague.

It is so, too, I think, with the remote
Populations of memory: they stand above
Our imperceptible journeys and indulgence,
Easily unseen by a simple turn of the head,
Impossible to grasp in contour, always a little
Shifting, and the same. Death has engraved them
Lovely and lofty, and my metaphysic
Smiles to align them here, the shadowy ones
Tinted so faint, yet luminous as gems.

A property of distance. And distance?
A requisite of the just, which is proportion,
Or holy measure, that the sages loved,
Being so fond of stringed instruments and so
Mild: they liked puppies as well as you;
And saw fit, being profound, not to reflect
Chaos unbounded, but to extract therefrom
Numerous order and magnificence.

So at least I interpret the very thin hostile azure
Wherein these stones are dipt, and I imagine
Of time and the great dead, they too
Correctly make a tune with me; let me
Behold by their grave light my miniscule
Part in the swaying and tranquil grandeur here.




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