Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SIGNET, by GEORGE SANTAYANA Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: So old, so new, so white, so olive-green Last Line: May reap the harvest -- for the harvest waits. Subject(s): Fools; Harvard University; Writing & Writers | ||||||||
So old, so new, so white, so olive-green, When, Shades of Art, was such a palace seen? When was Ionic with such grace applied? When looked false columns half so dignified? When to a roof so barbarously laid Did screening Beauty add a balustrade? When have armorial bearings so concealed Pride in good taste as does our modest shield? When went such simple furniture so far? When flowed Castalian Springs o'er such a bar? These chaste charms fetter but to purge the soul, Coquetry peeps, yet Virtue holds control. Ah, as when Dido, building Carthage, found A bull-hide's circuit covered ample ground, So we, to compass dreams of vaulting pride, Took but the measure of a single Hyde, And this luxurious freshness to dispose Took but the counsel of a single Rose. So great a prize our ancient merit drew And brought us to fresh thrones and mansions new. But will the eighteenth century return Because we raise a gate or poise an urn? Will riper spirits, marshalled on our shelves, In our crude bodies re-create themselves? In vain we boast to live in Georgian state: Where's the trim garden, where the massive plate? Our three gaunt elms will with but scanty leaves Fan a few summers the overshadowed eaves. In their fresh paint these battered beams decay While iron bee-hives rise across the way. The widow blushes in a bridal veil But 'neath the rouge her wrinkles tell the tale. Her the contractor's optimistic mind Shoves on before, the mucker shoves behind, Below, the rising tides of Charles invade, Above, the L's inexorable shade. Alas, gentility, alas, repose. Thy quiet annals, rural Cambridge, close. Oblivious tempests from the east and west Sweep o'er the poets that in Auburn rest. Those antique worthies that with shuffling feet And prayerful eyeballs walked the village street, Pure hearts, not too encumbered with their freight Of little burdens to sustain the great. Then pensive Emerson hushed the zealot's brawl, Outsoared the creed and recomposed the All; Then the boy Bryant with grandiloquent breath Taught the young heart docility to death; Then Whittier, psalmist to the rustic mind, Kept the phrase lowly and the message kind; Then Longfellow, delighting to rehearse Selected legends in deliberate verse, Travelled the world with bland and open heart Till that smooth mirror caught the smile of art; Then Lowell, too, contrived the civic lay, If laboured eloquent, if artless gay; And Norton, last sad relic of the clan, Joined love of beauty with the love of man. Kindly procession, honourable sires Of gracious thoughts, their little light expires. Their music tinkles cracked and faintly sweet Like old pianos in some shabby street Where the poor spinster starves to be genteel And wheedles passions she could never feel. Meantime the Book Trade spreads from pole to pole Smothers the earth in words and rules the soul. Every fresh morning thirty million reams Covered with drivel, heralded with screams; For daily surfeit thirty thousand cooks Stuffing our stomachs with their half-baked books. The vice of reading, the awful thirst for ink Chokes us: all read, but who can speak or think. To some few grunts the language is confined And to review reviews exhausts the mind. Driven, not led, without the boon of light, We vilely scratch to scratch and write to write. No master-voice prevails above the crowd. Omnivorous, blind, ignoble, rash, and loud The rumbling monster growls a muffled bark Drags its slow coils and fattens in the dark, And, big with unimagined arts and creeds, Writhes in birth pangs, not knowing what it breeds. New men, new minds, new century, new world! In what a vortex, masters, are we whirled! Earth rolls; its gods have suffered overthrow; The Zodiac makes its round like any show; Like aeronauts new-launched on ether's stream The constellations are propelled by steam; Bright Phoebus, with his cobs at length annoyed, Rides in his golden bubble through the void; (Him over Cambridge have I often seen Blaze like the one and scorch like t'other Greene) Nor may he hope, exhausted by the race, For Thetis' bosom, night, and silent space; Too many shocks have galvanised the air And every whisper reaches everywhere. The once serene and infinite inane Shivers all through -- a neuresthenic brain! Nor are the heavens only overstrung; Even on earth, what wonders tie the tongue! The nations tremble at a Harvard man, The Hohenzollern turn republican, A bit of Venice rises in the Hub, The Signet lounges in the A D Club! Nothing can stem the universal dance. The world's a whirling dervish in a trance That fast and faster plies the whip and prod. Acceleration is our only God. Well, let time hasten. Let the past recede. The wind that rends the petal strews the seed. Let the hoarse voices of the mighty mob Drown every echoed song and futile sob. Endure the deluge. Let each scribbling year Dump all its rubbish in one marshy mere. There putrefaction will transmute the mass; Soon peeps the moss, soon sprouts the blade of grass; There soon the sea-bird builds among the reeds; First the coarse poppy buds, then sweeter weeds; At length a shepherd threads that bosky vale; Late comes the rose, and last the nightingale. So from the substance of ignoble things Rises each vision that the poet sings, Love out of lust, and friendship out of wine, And out of death philosophy divine. Why should thy sodden lump of conscious clay, Ignorant heart, be fruitful less than they, Or the quick atoms of the fiery mind Compose no star, their scattered rays combined? Out of our common soil and brooding hours Time, the magician, may evoke new flowers, And from racked souls in vain ambitions caught Eternity may call and summon thought. One of you haply, darling of the Fates, May reap the harvest -- for the harvest waits. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CELL, SELECTION by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 126: THE DOUBTING MAN by LYN HEJINIAN WAKING THE MORNING DREAMLESS AFTER LONG SLEEP by JANE HIRSHFIELD COMPULSIVE QUALIFICATIONS by RICHARD HOWARD DEUTSCH DURCH FREUD by RANDALL JARRELL LET THEM ALONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS |
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