Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES, by EDGAR LEE MASTERS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Muse of the meditative hymn, and muse Last Line: Nor strew you limb from limb along the way? | ||||||||
I Muse of the meditative hymn, and Muse Of chronicles and the scroll, to us refuse No gift to sing the daimon, the divine God-head of Nature, Freedom and the Vine. Nor less that Orpheus of the Mysteries: Stars and the Soul and Heaven, and the Seas Of tangible streams made light above the dust Of this bewildering earth of Flesh and Lust. II First from what Thracian land Did your attendants come In coon-skin caps and jeans, Into this wilderness, spanned By mountains, to this home Of the Corn-mother, clothed in variable greens Of barley, oats and wheat? Hither hurried your adventurous feet From England, and from the hills Above the Rhine, and out of the valleys Of the populous plain Of Lombardy, around the Seine, You came Like flame that follows flame! From Galway, Lyons, Bergen, Budapest, Onward you pressed, With hearts that sang, and brave, Like wave that runs to wave! And from all northlands of new dreams, from ills That stir the Spring awakening and the quest. Thence were these swarming sallies Into New England, and the great Northwest -- Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee. Thracians you were, attending Dionyse, And seeking realms of Nature to be free. Ciders from orchards would have ease, And wine from vineyards, to be planted, Where the roar of mountain torrents haunted Heights of the pine and slopes of fragrant grasses From plains to granite passes. Rocks sealed with frost and ice which prisoned The secret wine of Life new sensed and newly visioned Flowed when the Spring of a great Age, and its Herakles, Fire of the Sun of Liberty, melted the locks Of ancient and forbidding rocks Binding the torrent: human and divine Strength and adventure: Maenads and Thyiades, Bacchae, Bassarides: Spirits and evangels of new wine. Mad Ones: armed for war. And Rushing Ones: defying Strife. Inspired Ones: trailing the Star Of larger life. III And with this swift descent, To this far occident, Tracking the gleam, the god, the freer fields; Rejoicing, but in rites For the Mystery, the delights Of living and of thought, which moulds and wields, These hunters, fur-capped, like the devotees Out of the Thrace of old, worshipping and defending The wine-grower, and temple-builder, Dionyse, Carved from the fire impregnate Earth the sovereignties Of Maryland, New York, and Tennessee's Mountainous realm, to the blending Of foothills with the meadows of Illinois. And made initiate in great liberties The farthest West, until the Orient sea's Soft thunder lustrates California, bending Above green water, clothed in purple and gold. Carved these with hope their children would uphold, And no hand would destroy The altars of States heaped full of grapes and grain: Births of the Sun and earth, to be adored, And gathered in high festival and joy From mountain side and plain; And drunk from golden kantharoi, God entering into man, thereby: restored By the blood and flesh of the god, the lord, To strength and vision to unveil Deep mysteries and raptures, worshippings Of nature, love for man, for deities Quick intimations, quiverings through the wings Of larger life, and sweeter music, cities Of higher fellowships and lovelier ways Of wisdom, where the phantoms of the Pities, And the Hatreds, the Agonies Of Melancholy, Madness, Soul's Disease From horrors, and from idiot pieties Are softened or dispelled in Freedom's praise. IV Pentheus in the tree-top spies upon The wild white women, the dance, the festival. And Judas spies on Jesus In the epiphany of Orpheus out of Dionysus. But the cup is drunk by the lover, the singer John. Who finding the ecstasy of sorrow, and sounding the deeps Of love and vision, human and mystical In the wine cup, oh, beloved guest, Sinks in a moment of ineffable rest, And rid of the flesh, half sleeps Upon the Master's breast. Judas alert for treasure and for treason Dips in the sop his bread -- Judas the founder of the sect which fouls The feast of Life, lizards and owls. But where the liknon is borne, the cradle heaped With fruits and flowers at the bridal feast, O, Dionysiac Christ, you passed the cup; And at the supper of parting, O lovely priest, At the time of the fan, and the purging of the floor, You served the blood of the grape, and you did sup With fur-capped fellows, and revealed the lore Of remembrance for the mysteries you had spoken Over the purple hills, and by the yellow shore In wine quaffed and bread broken. V Thin lips where cruel smiles betray Envy and frigid spirits, souls of gray Who will descend upon you, rend and slay? Unknowers of the cycle of Man's day: That nourished flesh grows spirit, and that wine Is the oil of the lamp of the soul, and feeds the flame That lights the world with Art! Who will waylay Your spying and your hatred, limb from limb Tear you, or drive you to a death of shame, Like Judas self-hung? As if in paradigm, Purple but horrible! Cut-throats of the rites Of amity and dreams, the blossoming, The release from the flesh to soul's delights, Intenser life in soft intoxication -- And from that life, and rapturous elation Who are you who restrain, Making a cult of undelivered pain? -- Through which men love and fashion, sing. You false salvationists and street haranguers, Self-drunk with soul suppression and perversion, Who shout the terror of putrescence, never beauty; You with suspicions of the peasant Persian; You foul-breathed ranters of Duty About these states, you vermin-eaten clangers Of hog-ribs, paper tambourines: -- Degenerate instruments for an imbecile faith, And mockeries of bright silver (touched by queens, The Muses), and the ebony crotola. You scare-crows of the Maenads and the Muses, Breastless or babeless women who would vote For rulership of other homes, not yours. And you who moralize and gloat On the refuse of banquets in the sewers. You preachers of Denial and of Death, And maniacs of repression which refuses The cup of life! And in this bacchanalia, You followers of Orpheus, as reformer, Plain dressed in alpaca and string ties, Who bellow forth your prophecies and curses Not that man lives, but that man dies. You carriers of umbrellas, not the thyrsos, Or rifles of the fur-capped pioneers; Slick spouters who fill fat penurious purses Out of inevitable tears. You Judases to Beauty, the sneak, informer, Blind that all Canas must precede The soul's Gethsemanes, that there can be Save Cana strengthens, no Gethsemane; And if no living then no heart to bleed Its blood to make us like the god, the Christ. No flower of spirit without root and vine, Nor loveliness for our sakes sacrificed; No beauty without wine -- You who these mysteries see not, or gainsay Who will tear limb from limb of you and slay? VI You who behold no spirit in earth and sun, And in their marriage no symbol of increase; And you who plan or plot or brood, but run About the wine press never, and who shun The kinship which makes one of beasts and man, Blossoms and vines and trees. You who see not the mystery of food, The ecstasy of the feast, replenishment Of spirit in the wine-cup, and who ban In fear or loathing, swooning of the blood; You who can take as memory's sacrament The wafer and the thimble of vapid juice, And yet deny us, seekers of elation, Re-birth through Dionysus, the youthful Christ: Living, rejoicing in Life's thrilling spring, Not grieving in its autumn and decline, Bridal, not funeral wine In the hour of memory and of parting; You who forbid our ritual and our use Of Nature's secrets, our illumination, Our sleep, our peace, Our freedom from the Fears, intoxication In which our souls are paradised; Our insight, charities, and our release From the grave of the day's flesh, our Orphic lips Through which we find creations, sun-lit wings, Love, wanderings of the soul, and fellowships -- You who these wisdoms see not, or gainsay Who will tear limb from limb of you, and slay? Will the old States never come to us, never again, And the sovereignty of men, In the mountains of our fathers, along the boundless plain? Has the will of the people perished, or passed into the hand Of the oafs and boors and lunk-heads of the land, And the bigot, Puritan, And the martyrs to the martyrdom of Pain, Seeking remembrance not for Life, but Death? Have we given up the sister realms, the freedom of the States Through a tyranny of shame In the South land where the black-man wears the gag? Shall we bear the blight of cities, charged to electorates In the silence of the bearers of the flag? Shall the cowardice of sycophants commissioned to obey Defeat the trust, but call it still our voice? Shall we who give you, as we wish, the choice Of freedom to be solemn or rejoice, Avenge not your injustice, nor gainsay, Nor strew you limb from limb along the way? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: FLETCHER MCGEE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: GEORGE GRAY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MINERVA JONES by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: DAVIS MATLOCK by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: DORA WILLIAMS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: EMILY SPARKS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: LAMBERT HUTCHINS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: LYMAN KING by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. KESSLER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: SARAH BROWN by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: STATE'S ATTORNEY FALLAS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |
|