Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A CANTICLE, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY Poet's Biography First Line: Lovely is daytime when the joyful sun goes singing Last Line: Of glimmering petals down an air from far away. Subject(s): Beauty; Nature | ||||||||
Lovely is daytime when the joyful sun goes singing, Lovely is night with stars and round or sickled moon, Lovely are trees, forever lovely, whether in winter Or musical midsummer or when they bud and tassel Or crown themselves with stormy splendors in the fall. But, lovelier than night or day or tree in blossom, Is there no secret infinite loveliness behind? Beautiful is water, running on rocks in mountains Or bosoming sunsets where the valley rivers ponder, Beautiful is ocean with its myriad colors, Its southern blues and purples, its arctic gray and silver, Blown into green frost-fretted or wine-dark in the evening. But still more beautiful than waters calm or cloven, Than ocean thunder-maned or floored for delicate springtime, Is there no beauty visible save to our eyes? Marvellous is the grass, friendly and very clean, Though intimate with all the dead, the ceaseless dead, It has great heart and makes the ancient earth forgetful; It is not troubled by the wind and from the storm It learns a radiance; all night it wears the dew And in the morning it is glad with a pure gladness. More marvellous than dew-strown morning grasses, is there No brave immortal joyousness that wrought the grass? Who lifteth in the eastern sky the dark, gold moon? Who painteth green and purple on the blackbird's throat? What hand of rapture scattereth sunshine through the rain And flingeth round the barren boughs of spring returned Dim fire? Who stencilled with caught breath the moth's wide wing, And lit the ruby in his eyes? Whose ecstasy Set silver ripples on the racing thunder-cloud And flared the walls of storm with terrible dead green? What dreamer fretted dew upon the flat-leafed corn And twined in innocence of useless perfect art The morning-glory with its bubble blue, soon gone? Was there no hand that braided autumn branches in Their solemn brede and stained them with a sombre rust? Was there no love conceived the one-starred, rivered evening, And dipped in crocus fire the gray horns of the moon? They say there never was a god men loved but died -- Dead is Astarte, Astoreth is dead, and Baal; Zeus and Jehovah share a single grave and deep; Spring comes, but Freia comes not nor Persephone: On temple plinth and porch the random grasses run, Of all their priests alone the white-stolled stars are faithful. Dead are the gods, forever dead! And yet -- and yet -- Who lifteth in the eastern sky the dark, gold moon? . . . There is a loveliness outlasts the temporal gods, A beauty that when all we know as beautiful Is gone, will fashion in delight the forms it loves, In that wide room where all our stars are but a drift Of glimmering petals down an air from far away. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INTERRUPTED MEDITATION by ROBERT HASS TWO VIEWS OF BUSON by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: HOME by LYN HEJINIAN WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY: 17 by LYN HEJINIAN LET US GATHER IN A FLOURISHING WAY by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA IN MICHAEL ROBINS?ÇÖS CLASS MINUS ONE by HICOK. BOB BREADTH. CIRCLE. DESERT. MONARCH. MONTH. WISDOM by JOHN HOLLANDER VARIATIONS: 16 by CONRAD AIKEN UNHOLY SONNET 13 by MARK JARMAN OVERTONES by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY |
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