Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIRE: 7. CELENO, by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIRE: 7. CELENO, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The blind king hides his weeping eyeless head
Last Line: That triple-headed hound of hell their god.
Subject(s): Blindness; Courts & Courtiers; Grief; Hell; Nations; Visually Handicapped; Sorrow; Sadness


THE blind king hides his weeping eyeless head,
Sick with the helpless hate and shame and awe,
Till food have choked the glutted hell-bird's craw
And the foul cropful creature lie as dead
And soil itself with sleep and too much bread;
So the man's life serves under the beast's law,
And things whose spirit lives in mouth and maw
Share shrieking the soul's board and soil her bed,
Till man's blind spirit, their sick slave resign
Its kingdom to the priests whose souls are swine,
And the scourged serf lie reddening from their rod,
Discrowned, disrobed, dismantled, with lost eyes
Seeking where lurks in what conjectual skies
That triple-headed hound of hell their God.





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