Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TO EDWARD DOWDEN (ON RECEIVING A COPY OF 'THE LIFE OF SHELLEY'), by WILLIAM WATSON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: First, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank Last Line: Struck from man's lyric heartstrings, shall survive. Alternate Author Name(s): Watson, John William Subject(s): Biography; Dowden, Edward (1843-1913); Poetry & Poets; Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822); Biographers | ||||||||
FIRST, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank The giver of the feast. For feast it is, Though of ethereal, translunary fare -- His story who pre-eminently of men Seemed nourished upon starbeams and the stuff Of rainbows, and the tempest, and the foam; Who hardly brooked on his impatient soul The fleshly trammels; whom at last the sea Gave to the fire, from whose wild arms the winds Took him, and shook him broadcast to the world. In my young days of fervid poesy He drew me to him with his strange far light, -- He held me in a world all clouds and gleams And vasty phantoms, where ev'n Man himself Moved like a phantom 'mid the clouds and gleams. Anon the Earth recalled me, and a voice Murmuring of dethroned divinities And dead times deathless upon sculptured urn -- And Philomela's long-descended pain Flooding the night -- and maidens of romance To whom asleep St. Agnes' love-dreams come -- Awhile constrained me to a sweet duresse And thraldom, lapping me in high content, Soft as the bondage of white amorous arms. And then a third voice, long unheeded -- held Claustral and cold, and dissonant and tame -- Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys, Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn; And from the homely matter nigh at hand Ascending and dilating, it disclosed Spaces and avenues, calm heights and breadths Of vision, whence I saw each blade of grass With roots that groped about eternity, And in each drop of dew upon each blade The mirror of the inseparable All. The first voice, then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me free. Therefore, above all vocal sons of men, Since him whose sightless eyes saw hell and heaven, To Wordsworth be my homage, thanks, and love. Yet dear is Keats, a rich-hued presence, great With somewhat of a glorious soullessness. And dear, and great with an excess of soul, Shelley, the hectic flamelike rose of verse, All colour, and all odour, and all bloom, Steeped in the noonlight, glutted with the sun, But somewhat lacking root in homely earth, Lacking such human moisture as bedews His not less starward stem of song, who, rapt Not less in glowing vision, yet retained His clasp of the prehensible, retained The warm touch of the world that lies to hand, Not in vague dreams of man forgetting men, Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day; Who trusted nature, trusted fate, nor found An Ogre, sovereign on the throne of things; Who felt the incumbence of the unknown, yet bore Without resentment the Divine reserve; Who suffered not his spirit to dash itself Against the crags and wavelike break in spray, But 'midst the infinite tranquillities Moved tranquil, and henceforth, by Rotha stream And Rydal's mountain-mirror, and where flows Yarrow thrice sung or Duddon to the sea, And wheresoe'er man's heart is thrilled by tones Struck from man's lyric heartstrings, shall survive. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN AMERICAN BEAUTY; FOR ANN LONDON by CAROLYN KIZER MY GOOD FATHER by CAROLYN KIZER ON ANTI-BIOGRAPHY by WILL ALEXANDER UGO BASSI by HARRIET ELEANOR HAMILTON (BAILLE) KING EPIGRAM: LADY BIOGRAPHER by WILLIAM JAY SMITH |
|