Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE HEART, by FRANCIS THOMPSON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The heart you hold too small and local thing Last Line: The grandeurs of his babylonian heart. Variant Title(s): All's Vast Subject(s): Criticism & Critics; Hearts; Language; Words; Vocabulary | ||||||||
To my Critic who had objected to the phrase -- 'The heart's burning floors'. I THE heart you hold too small and local thing Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, The mighty Love has been impalaced there; That has she given him as his wide demesne, And for his sceptre ample empery; Against its door to knock has Beauty been Content; it has its purple canopy, A dais for the sovereign lady spread Of many a lover, who the heaven would think Too low an awning for her sacred head. The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink -- Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled. II ONOTHING, in this corporal earth of man, That to the imminent heaven of his high soul Responds with colour and with shadow, can Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph Be mighty through its mighty habitants; If God be in His Name; grave potence if The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm Nature is whole in her least things exprest, Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; And all man's Babylons strive but to impart The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOWYOUBEENS' by TERRANCE HAYES MY LIFE: REASON LOOKS FOR TWO, THEN ARRANGES IT FROM THERE by LYN HEJINIAN THE FATALIST: THE BEST WORDS by LYN HEJINIAN WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY: 17 by LYN HEJINIAN CANADA IN ENGLISH by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA THERE IS NO WORD by TONY HOAGLAND CONSIDERED SPEECH by JOHN HOLLANDER AND MOST OF ALL, I WANNA THANK ?Ǫ by JOHN HOLLANDER ARAB LOVE SONG by FRANCIS THOMPSON |
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