Now the plains come to adore the mountain wall, Their yellow fields running and bowing like waves To celebrate in such serene order the fire And love that bore these stony things. Now fragile Air, sweet health of a superficial season Garland a while the majesty of winter. And I, not long nor with profit hereabouts, Note merely the blue, the watercolor blue A descriptive man would like; the rare And rifted shadowline of trees, the smooth Peaks too cold for the warm west to redden, Much, or gild them. They remain sharply vague. It is so, too, I think, with the remote Populations of memory: they stand above Our imperceptible journeys and indulgence, Easily unseen by a simple turn of the head, Impossible to grasp in contour, always a little Shifting, and the same. Death has engraved them Lovely and lofty, and my metaphysic Smiles to align them here, the shadowy ones Tinted so faint, yet luminous as gems. A property of distance. And distance? A requisite of the just, which is proportion, Or holy measure, that the sages loved, Being so fond of stringed instruments and so Mild: they liked puppies as well as you; And saw fit, being profound, not to reflect Chaos unbounded, but to extract therefrom Numerous order and magnificence. So at least I interpret the very thin hostile azure Wherein these stones are dipt, and I imagine Of time and the great dead, they too Correctly make a tune with me; let me Behold by their grave light my miniscule Part in the swaying and tranquil grandeur here. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PENITENTIAL PSALM: 6. DOMINE NE IN FURORE by THOMAS WYATT YOUTH AND CUPID by ELIZABETH I ON THE DEATH OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN by PHILIP FRENEAU SONG: TO CELIA by PHILOSTRATUS THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE THE INDIGNANT CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS |