Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO THE STATUE OF MOSES; THE MASTERPIECE OF MICHAEL ANGELO, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO THE STATUE OF MOSES; THE MASTERPIECE OF MICHAEL ANGELO, by                    
First Line: Statue! Whose giant limbs
Last Line: For ye had bent the knee to one of godlike mould!
Subject(s): David (d. 962 B.c.);jews;michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564); Judaism


STATUE! whose giant limbs
Old Buanorotti planned,
And Genius carved with meditative hand,
Thy dazzling radiance dims
The best and brightest boast of sculpture's favorite land.
What dignity adorns
That beard's prodigious sweep!
That forehead, awful with mysterious horns
And cogitation deep,
Of some uncommon mind the rapt beholder warns.

In that proud semblance, well
My soul can recognize
The prophet fresh from converse with the skies;
Nor is it hard to tell
The liberator's name, the guide of Israel.

Well might the deep respond
Obedient to that voice,
When on the Red Sea shore he waved his wand
And bade the tribes rejoice,
Saved from the yawning gulf and the Egyptian's bond!

Fools! in the wilderness
Ye raised a calf of gold,
Had ye then worshipped what I now behold
Your crime had been far less—
For ye had bent the knee to one of godlike mould!





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