Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TAOPING, by JAMES ELROY FLECKER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TAOPING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Across the vast blue-shadow-sweeping plain
Last Line: Their cannon-bowelled fortress of taoping?
Subject(s): China; Soldiers


Across the vast blue-shadow-sweeping plain
The gathered armies darken through the grain,
Swinging curved swords and dragon-sculptured spears,
Footmen, and tiger-hearted cavaliers.
Them Government (whose fragrance Poets sing)
Hath bidden break the rebels of Taoping,
And fire and fell the monstrous fort of fools
Who dream that men may dare the deathless rules.
Such, grim example even now can show
Where high before the Van, in triple row,
First fiery blossom of rebellion's tree,
Twelve spear-stemmed heads are dripping silently.
(On evil day you sought, O ashen lips,
The kiss of women from our town of ships,
Nor ever dreamt, O spies, of falser spies,
The poppied cup and passion-mocking eyes!)

By these grim civil trophies undismayed,
In lacquered panoplies the chiefs parade.
Behind, the plain's floor rocks: the armies come:
The rose-round lips blow battle horns: the drum
Booms oriental measure. Earth exults.
And still behind, the tottering catapults
Pulled by slow slaves, grey backs with crimson lines,
Roll resolutely west. And still behind,
Down the canal's hibiscus-shaded marge
The glossy mules draw on the cedar barge,
Railed silver, blue-silk-curtained, which within
Bears the Commander, the old Mandarin,
Who never left his palace gates before,
But hath grown blind reading great books on war.

Now level on the land and cloudless red
The sun's slow circle dips toward the dead.
Night-hunted, all the monstrous flags are furled:
The Armies halt, and round them halts the World.
A phantom wind flies out among the rice;
Hush turns the twin horizons in her vice;
Air thickens: earth is pressed upon earth's core.
The cedar barge swings gently to the shore
Among her silver shadows and the swans:
The blind old man sets down his pipe of bronze.
The long whips cease. The slaves slacken the chain:
The gaunt-towered engines space the silent plain.
The hosts like men held in a frozen dream
Stiffen. The breastplates drink the scarlet gleam.
But the Twelve Heads with shining sockets stare
Further and further West. Have they seen there,
Black on blood's sea and huger than Death's wing,
Their cannon-bowelled fortress of Taoping?





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