Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WABAN MERE, by EDWARD NOYES POMEROY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WABAN MERE, by                    
First Line: Fair centre of a fair demesne
Last Line: The age of gold is now.
Subject(s): Love; Memory; Old Age; Pictures


Fair centre of a fair demesne,
Thyself its fairest part,
A lovely thing hath never been
Without a lovelier heart.

For thee the mid-day's splendors burn,
The midnight's stars are thine;
And eve and morn the twilights turn
Thy waters into wine.

The scene is necromancy's dream—
Is nature's sorcery:
The shore and sky bewitch the stream,
The stream the shore and sky.

The present in confusion lies;
The vanished past is here;
And pictures of the future rise
From thee, enchanted mere.

A mellow, mediæval light
Comes down like golden rain;
And changes yonder mansions bright
To old chateaux of Spain.

The meadows billowy and warm
Are meads of Sicily;
And, down their deeps, the gliding form
Is fair Persephone.

'Tis here the siren-music wins
That never ruin brings:
Ulysses here entranced begins
And ends his wanderings.

Here duty points and knowledge leads
The eager, earnest throngs
To winning words, and dauntless deeds
Shall right the ages' wrongs.

Do here Œnone's sorrows lurk
Like mists in cloudless skies?
Doth here deception's sorrow work
The guile of Helen's eyes?

It may not be. O sentient thing,
More luminous than glass,
Such shadows do not hither fling,
Deflect them as they pass!

Thy beauty is the aureole old
That haloes learning's brow.
Time need not "fetch the age of gold,"
The age of gold is now.





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