Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON A COPY OF KEATS' 'ENDYMION', by CLINTON SCOLLARD Poet's Biography First Line: Has not the glamoured season come once more Last Line: Still thrill the heart, still fill the listening sky! Subject(s): Keats, John (1795-1821); Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
HAS not the glamoured season come once more, When earth puts on her arras of soft green? See where along the meadow rillet's shore The wild-rose buds unfold! Eastward the boughs with murmurous laughter lean To warm themselves in morning's generous gold. The foxgloves nod along the English lanes That saw erewhile the dancing sprites of snow; Night-long the leaf-hid nightingale complains With such melodious woe That Sleep, enamored of her soaring strains, Is widely wakeful as the dim hours go. Ope but the page -- and hark, the impassioned bird That through the hush of the be-shadowed hours Pours in the ear of dark its melting word! Here is as mellow song As ever welled from pleached laurel bowers, Or e'er was borne soft orient winds along; Here may one list all ecstasies they sung, The shepherds and the maid of Arcady, Flower-garlanded what time the world was young; -- Pandean minstrelsy, Low flutings from slim pipes of silver tongue Played by the dryads on some upland lea. And blent with these are heavenly whisperings As faint as whitening poplars make at dawn, Sublime suggestions of fine-fingered strings Touched in celestial air, And earthward through the dulling ether drawn, Yet falling on us more than earthly fair; The voice divine that young Endymion knew In the cool woodland's darkmost depths by night, When godlike ardors thrilled him through and through; And his voice from the height Whither, on wakening, drenched with chilly dew, He sought the goddess in the gathering light. But ah, what mournful memories are mine, Song-wakened at this lavish summer-tide! Can I forget that somber cypress line By old Rome's ruined wall, The lonely grave that alien grasses hide, And the pathetic silence shrouding all? Who would forget? Blest be the song that bears My soul across aerial seas of space As wingedly as airy fancy fares! For now that earth's worn face The radiant glow of life's renewal wears, Would I in reverence seek that sacred place. There would I lay these woven shreds of rhyme In lieu of scattered heart's-ease and the rose. Behold how Song has triumphed over Time, For still his song rings clear, Though where the tender Roman violet grows Deep has he slumbered many a fateful year! If to the poet's rapt imaginings Beauty to be wed, with love of purpose high, Despite the cynic and his scornful flings Song shall not fail and die, But like the bird that up the azure springs Still thrill the heart, still fill the listening sky! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB |
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