Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WINDMILL, by JOHN BYRNE LEICESTER WARREN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WINDMILL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Desolate windmill, eyelid of the distance
Last Line: Life, as a windmill grinds the bread of life.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lancaster, William P.; Preston, George F.; De Tabley, 3d Baron; De Tabley, Lord
Subject(s): Windmills


Desolate windmill, eyelid of the distance,
Gaunt as a gibbet, ruled against the sky:
Rolling and rocking in the wind's persistance,
Thy black uplifted dome-house seems to fly:

Writhing its wings, as eagle Promethean,
Who tears the Titan on Caucasian height.
While all the gentle gods above sing paean,
To see Jove's red-winged vengeance rend and smite.

Emblem of Life, whose roots are torn asunder,
An isolated soul that hates its kind,
Who loves the region of the rolling thunder,
And finds seclusion in the misty wind.

Type of a love, that wrecks itself to pieces
Against the barriers of relentless Fate,
And tears its lovely pinions on the breezes
Of just too early or of just too late.

At eve thou loomest like a one-eyed giant
To some poor crazy knight, who pricks along,
And sees thee wave in haze thy arms defiant,
And growl the burden of thy grinding song.

Against thy russet sail-sheet slowly turning,
The raven beats belated in the blast:
Behind thee ghastly, blood-red Eve is burning,
Above, rose-feathered drifts are racking fast.

The curlews pipe around their plaintive dirges,
Thou art a Pharos to the sea-mews hoar,
Set sheer above the tumult of the surges,
As sea-mark on some spacious ocean floor.

My heart is sick with gazing on thy feature,
Old blackened sugar-loaf with fourfold wings,
Thou seemest as some monstrous insect creature,
Some mighty chafer armed with iron stings.

Emblem of man who, after all his moaning,
And strain of dire immeasurable strife,
Has yet this consolation, all atoning—
Life, as a windmill grinds the bread of Life.





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