Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE IMMORTAL RESIDUE, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE IMMORTAL RESIDUE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Love and the lofty heart and tears - these three
Last Line: Hold back their portion due of tears and dark.
Subject(s): Dreams; Hearts; Kisses; Love; Socrates (470-399 B.c.); Tears; Nightmares


Love and the lofty heart and tears -- these three
Immortal are, and draw eternally
Deep from the young world's loveliness their life.
The kiss, the prayer, the cry -- the same to-day
As when the brute with noble pang distressed
Cleared the abysm and was man. Than these
Not surer come the stars, nor flooding up
The rainy slopes of spring dark violets.
More utterly than sunset cloud dissolved,
Soft Syracuse has passed. The bannered fleet
That flashed into her harbor scornfully
Left not a ghostly sail to haunt the blue.
And they that heard in Athens ere they came
Great Socrates, whose spoken word was like
The calm intoning of the lustral ocean,
Before they perished in their slavery,
Bequeathed not any dream for us to learn.
Nor shall we know the thought of those tall girls
That stood where now the yellow gorse stands high,
And in their golden, fluttering loveliness
Watched the young prisoners. Instead, remain
The bay, the bubble air, the secret dust,
These, and the mortal kinship that we own.
Kisses they whispered for I beg to-day.
Their eyes did never blur but I could guess.
And as their spirits stood, tall as the sword
Of one that guards the portal of a queen
And leans thereon in moonlight, mine hath stood.
I know their loves and winged hearts and tears,
And mine shall every man that lives know too;
And so the same, forever, to the close.
Perhaps some spring a thousand years from now
Two crowned ineffably with youth, their hearts
A-toss in wind-flower dance before the sun,
Loitering lover-wise across the fields
And empty places that I knew, may chance
Upon the rubble where I dream, and muse:
"Those old barbarians, dead so long ago,
Was life to them so fair, and did the sun
Shine honey-sweet into their open hearts?
Could they have ever dreamed such love as ours,
Or dared, O love, this slow, divinest kiss?"
Their words, I know, shall warm the flower roots
That were my heart. To them as now to me
May day be only blue; all moon the night;
And may enamored fate a little while
Hold back their portion due of tears and dark.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net