LAUREATE of corruption, on whose brow The bay-leaves are all slimy with the worm! Thou art a nightingale whose songs affirm The canker in the rosebud, from a bough Of the dark cypress warbling. Some strange vow Thy spirit must have taken before birth To some strange god, to desecrate the earth With visions vile and beautiful as thou. We loathe thee with the sure, instinctive dread Of young things for the graveyard and the scar. And though God wept when Lucifer's great star With its long train cried from the deeps blood- red, Still must we name thee with the second dead, For when the angels fall they fall so far! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PORTRAIT BY A NEIGHBOR by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY VALENTINES TO MY MOTHER: 1884 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI PSALM 19 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE PARABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE JAY WALKER by BERTON BRALEY THE SHEPHERD'S PIPE: SEVENTH ECLOGUE by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |