Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DESTINY, by JOHN BANISTER TABB


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DESTINY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oft had a melancholy star
Last Line: The splendor of the morning star.
Alternate Author Name(s): Father Tabb
Subject(s): Fate; Destiny


Oft had a melancholy star,
Of human aspect mild,
In pensive vigil gazed upon
A sleeping child,
And whitened, as the wave of light
Dispelled the vision from his sight.

Behind the sun, disconsolate,
The livelong summer day,
In love and loneliness he sighed
The hours away,
Till roused from reverie to feel
The twilight vapors o'er him steal.

Night after night, all tremulous,
Distraught, and paler grown,
He saw, enamoured of the spell,
That form alone,
Nor found amid the realms of air
A paragon of love so fair.

"Alas!" and silently a tear
The swelling thought betrayed,
"Forlorn, sweet child, my destiny
Apart!" he said;
"A phantom of perpetual night
To woo thy slumbering orbs of light!

"Lost in sublimity of space
Above the eternal snow
That clothes in raiment virginal
The peaks below,
In vain this rhapsody of sighs
To life the fringes of thine eyes.

"O, for some charm melodious!
A seraph-tone -- to sweep
In throbbing syllables adown
The tide of sleep,
And with the conscious smile to raise
Thy spirit to my wistful gaze!"

He ceased; for, hark! a nightingale
From dreams all passion-wrought,
Wakes into song, interpreting
Thy plaintive thought,
Till, soft as lily white,
The eyelids blossom with delight.

And lo! the child in ecstasy
Of reverence hath bent
Upon the burning satellite
His gaze intent,
While blend in rapture of desire
The mortal and immortal fire.

Serene but coldly beautiful
At dewy dawn of day,
A moon-pale masterpiece of Death
In marble lay,
And o'er it, tremulously far,
The splendor of the morning star.





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