Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY, by JOHN GRIMES


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY, by                    
First Line: Under the shadow girdered bridge
Last Line: And the smoke—a violet-winged messenger of praise.
Subject(s): Moody, William Vaughn (1853-1917)


I

UNDER the shadow girdered bridge
The river flows beneath me like serpent hair,
Out to the dim grey lake:
And the sown reflections of the shore lamps,
Gleaming on the dead water—
Carbuncle, topaz, emerald,—
In the jet hair of a courtesan.

An ore-boat lies at the dock,
Gaunt, perilous,
Like a ship of dead souls
Under the ghastly white ribbons of search-lights;
With spirits tremulous to and fro on the decks.
Beyond, through the open sides of the mill,
Where were pale quiverings of light—
Fire-white steam,
Red glow of hot iron,
The almost tender gleam of violet lamps,—
Juts out the angry flame of a converter,
White-hot, plunging, electric,
Tearing great gulfs in the night,
While red flame pours from the chimneys,
Mounting in pinnacles,
Reddening the low-hung clouds
Till they are like live embers,
The cinder of the last-day parchment scroll.

II

You come to me out of the inert night,
Spiritual yet subtly mortal,
And stand where I might lay my hand on yours.
For you are drawn to earth
With the ache for companionship,
With the sin and pain and beauty we know,
And for the strange discolored ecstacies we feel
Of joy or pain.

So we stand shoulder to shoulder,
Spirit and mortal,—
The mortal reaching the spiritual,
The spiritual feeling the mortal,—
Looking out where the river widens
And goes to meet the grey, mist-burdened lake,
Whence the dawn must come,
Tremendous, titan-like, yet ineffably sweet,
Out of the watery east.

Your hand seems to tremble on mine,
And your words come to me
Like soft sounds blown over the water:

You see but steel and flame
Melting the enchained heart
To pour it to molds of bitterness:
You see but smoke across the sky,
And the thick, lifeless stream.

I know that God would have it so:
The Sun of Righteousness will rise
More grandly, not from amethyst horizons
Fingered by dawn,
But rending through dark-hanging smoke,
Making it opalescent—
A trailing cloak in the wind.

The noisome mist of the water
Shall vibrate into heavy, vaporous gold
Rolling up to leave the golden waves
To the splashing of the pure wind:

Before our forges quench their flame
The fire must forge the sword
That shall slay evil in the street.

And perhaps God will let it be morning forever!
Then all our fires shall be flames of sacrifice,
And all our steel the edged, pure steel of truth,
And the smoke—a violet-winged messenger of praise.





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