Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNETS FOR LOST DIVINITIES, by WILLIAM E. SPENCER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONNETS FOR LOST DIVINITIES, by                    
First Line: You are supreme mistress of counterpoint
Last Line: Memorial to a moment, and a rose . . .
Alternate Author Name(s): Faust, Henri
Subject(s): Admiration


For Rachel

You are supreme mistress of counterpoint:
Gradations more subtle than we may know
Shed their nuances in your voice and anoint
Your suppliants with delights intense as slow;
Somehow sombre, somehow suggesting pain,
Yet does the sound of your melodies stir
Our Western hearts and we grow young again --
Swart pagans come down from the Chaldees' Ur.

Rachel, your eyes are cool shadowy brooks
Of Hebron: tawny dreams of Palestine
Stir in their windy deeps; you are what books
Are all too coarse to say: in you we glean
Strange delights of the primeval songs unsung
When men walked in wonder and the earth was young.

For Vivian

You wore your beauty like a wanton's guise,
You who were chaste and immanent with prayer,
Nor ever guessed the perils of your eyes
Soft with desire; a moment on the stair
Of my rapt vision, poised so soon for flight,
Hesitant you stood and at my plea swift turned,
Tossing a rose -- then vanished in some height
Of diffidence, where cooler ardors burned . . .

Perhaps it is as well, for I can claim
Throughout the crumbling of more constant urns,
Perfection still, forever now the same,
And kneel to it when disillusion burns --
While round me then a golden fragrance flows,
Memorial to a moment, and a rose . . .





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