Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WHITE BONE, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WHITE BONE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When first I saw the city lone
Last Line: With the white bone.
Subject(s): Cities; Civilization; Deserts; Food & Eating; Hallucinations And Illusions; Urban Life


WHEN first I saw the city lone
Lift on the blue its burial-stone,
"Look," said I, "where the desert's bone
Gleams in its mouth!"
The bleached light across the plain
Stamped the grim image on my brain,
Of bones that trail the camel-train
In burning drougth.

Alone that skeleton city stands,
By none remembered, in lost lands,
And miles about are blown the sands
Like a red sea;
And in the night the stars that lean
Over that spectreless pale scene,
Shudder at what there once had been
Man's memory.

'Tis strange how such a fancied thing
Will shape and stain our visioning.
I saw the beast's fawn-stripes en-ring
The preying mouth;
And when I lay at night alone,
I seemed myself that ruin shown,
Gnawed by the sands, like a white bone
In the red south.

The wrecks of eld in me were met;
A million suns had on me set;
The wild sand heaped the parapet,
Ribbed in long bars;
There sat my soul, with time o'er-grown,
And saw on heaven's wide prospect thrown,
The orb that bears the death-white bone
Among the stars.

What longings shook me for my youth
Still unimpregnated with truth,
Unpacked, brain-deep, with mental ruth,
From old time free!
To have once more my soul my own,
That was of God the monotone,
When I was young, ere I was grown
Man's soul to be!

Then the Wraith spoke within me: "Who
Shall tell my age? arisen anew,
Out of antiquity I drew
A subtle thing;
Borne flaming from my backward wake,
New exhalations from me flake,
And the past glories upward take
The Eternal Wing."

But often when the Wraith is dumb,
That Incubus will on me come,
And hoarse I hear my heart-beats drum,
Awake, alone;
And aye it is a fearsome sight,
When flashes on me in the night
The image of the beast bedight
With the white bone.





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