Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RUIN (2), by JOHN BANISTER TABB


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RUIN (2), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It stands like night
Last Line: Appalled the sight.
Alternate Author Name(s): Father Tabb
Subject(s): Ruins


It stands like Night,
The sepulchre of a departed light,
Whose glory gone,
Each hoary vestige chronicles
Of crumbling stone.

The portal now,
A broken arch majestic, as a brow
O'er Evening's eye,
Catches an azure glimpse beyond
Of fading sky.

On either hand,
Grim sentinels, the lofty turrets stand,
With many a scar
Of Time and tameless Elements
That wage his war.

The windows tall
Stare blindly from the ivy-shagged wall
Of massive power,
Stern as the eyeless Nazarite
In Gaza's tower.

O'er shattered frieze,
O'er buried plinth and capital, the breeze
That wanders by,
Woos the rank weed, low answering
Its plaintive sigh.

Time was, when one,
Mild as a maiden star to look upon,
Of pensive mood,
Here wrought a destiny obscure
In solitude.

Vague phantoms wove,
About her being, sympathies that move
To subtle thought --
Seraphic reveries that lure
The soul distraught,

Unto her mind
The melting moonlight and the moving wind,
The molten gleam
Of starry beacons jewelling
The limpid stream;

The sheen and shade
Of waking dawn and drowsy twilight made --
Each multiform
Design of earth and ocean,
Calm and storm --

Spake mysteries,
Revealing all the harmony that lies
In things we see;
Of life and death, the tides of joy
And misery.

So grew her soul,
Enamored of the spirits that control
The universe,
That powers beyond the visible
Communed with hers,

And each became
The warder of a consecrated flame;
As angels high
O'ershadowing the crystal shrine
Of Chastity.

But light, alas!
As to the stainless dewdrops in the grass,
A fatal gleam
Smote of its own satiety
The splendid dream;

And swift as fire,
Doom-driven to the wanton wind's desire
A hurricane
Of howling desolation leaped
The cloistered brain,

Wild as the woe
That rends the womb of Nature in the throes
Of mountain-birth,
Shuddered the dome celestial
And startled Earth,

With Echoes torn
From raping wrath and agonies of scorn --
A demon cry --
Lost in this dark contending cloud
Of Destiny.

The curse was past;
A sullen vapor silently o'ercast
The naked Night,
Till Ruin, hideous with Morn,
Appalled the sight.





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