Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, YOUTH, by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

YOUTH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Out of the spacious east of life
Last Line: And showering storms of glory o'er the beaten way.
Subject(s): Innocence; Memory; Youth


Out of the spacious east of life
Streams the clear dawn of youth's fair days,
The matin song and gracious ways
Of the sweet prime whose memory plays
Across the soul's long gaze
Like far off boreal splendours rife
With aureoles in northern skies,
Where the white wold lies
Illimitable to heaven's myriad eyes
In the waste night's immensities.
Out of those auroral hours,
Like perfume of far flowers
Borne by the flagging breeze
O'er intervening leas
Of barrenness, that fragrant prime
Comes borne sweet through wastes of time
Across wide plunging seas
From morn's Hesperides;
Ere youth with innocence sublime
Had left the golden clime
Of his fair matin, keen to sail
His slender shallop to the leaping gale.

Fair through the after years,
Across wide chasms swollen with storm
And dimmed with mists of tears,
Gleams the soft radiance of the form
That youth had builded fair
Out of the impalpable air
Of serenest hope,
Before life learned to grope
Amid the sombre bosks of melancholic care.
Whiter than the mountained snow,
Brighter than the crystal glow
Of virgin sunlight yet unkist
By grosser air to amethyst,
That lambent radiance sent
Its paradisial rays through all life's firmament:
Earth felt its lucent heat
Flood her central seat,
And her breast replete
With its soft warmth grew sweet
With fragrance of the bud
Reddening to flower upon her blood;
While from the glowing sphere
Of the overhanging year
Meting with variant sisterhood
Of changeful moons the moving season's mood,
Rolled virgin hymnals all unheard,
Save by youth's spirit stirred
To catch the diviner word
Angelically murmured;
For the heart of youth alone
May catch the ethereal tone
Of heaven's unseen zone,
Youth that looks with eyes
Seeing only paradise
In earth's wide visibilities,
Nor yet has learned the curse
That locks in death the glittering universe.

Then were all things true,
Time all sweets, nor any rue
Within Life's spacious garden grew;
There youth elate
Held royal state,
The smiling monarch of obedient fate;
While throned in every eye
Honour beamed resplendent sanctity;
And there Eve's gracious power,
The garden's golden dower,
As the virgin moon,
Night's chaste plenilune,
Lifts the vast sea's heaving flood,
Drew all life's tides to noble womanhood,
For all was fair and all was good.

Reign, then, Youth's Memory;
Let me your captive be,
And reap felicity
In the far distant gleam
Of that pure matin dream
Before the hour of ruth,
When all was sooth
In one harmonious round
Of diapasoned sound
In the full orbit of unsullied youth.
For now, alas! is lost the gift
Of paradise, and leap the swift
Raucous years headlong
Tumbled and broke among
The splintering rocks,
Where time's river shocks
Against the bitter sea
Of eternity.

I would return to thee,
Season of innocence
And that fresh joy, whence
Sounded clear the sweet accord
Of life's primeval word,
Deep music in far places stirred,
When heavenly fingers swept the trembling chord
For it is this
That makes the bliss
Of youth, and renders fair,
To the wide eyes of innocence,
All the ambient air
Of dawn in that intense
Clear light,
Burning a rose white
In the eternal morn beyond eclipse of night,
And, breaking through
The darkened circle of our blue,
Flashes in the eyes
Of youth with fires of paradise;
This the secret power
That clothes all earth with flower
Of beauty seen
Only in the sheen
Of that deep vision
Of the pure elysian,
Caught by the white soul of youth,
The unflecked mirror of the sun of truth,
Caught and given forth again
Into the blinded eyes of men,
Beauty's own celestial ray
Blotting out the light of common day,
And showering storms of glory o'er the beaten way.





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