Not every man has gentians in his house in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark darkening the day-time torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom, ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day torch-flower of the blue-smoking, darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze, black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light, lead me then, lead the way. Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark and Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON SONGS OUT OF SORROW: REFUGE by SARA TEASDALE TRAVEL by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE TRANSLATION by MARK VAN DOREN LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH RID OF HIS ENGINE by ALEXANDER ANDERSON A CHARACTER OF HIS FRIEND, W.B. ESQ by PHILIP AYRES A POEM, DEDICATED TO WILLIAM LAW, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY by ROBERT BLAIR |