Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


OBLIVION by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: NEAR THE GREAT PYRAMID, UNSHADOWED, WHITE
Last Line: THAN THAT BLIND WHITE OBLIVION OF NOON SKIES.

Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,
With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze,
Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays
Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.
About them, searing to the tingling sight,
Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways
Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,
In a white void with neither depth nor height.

Within the black core of the pyramid
Beneath the weight of sunless centuries
Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep:
Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid
He knows no black oblivion more deep
Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.



Home: PoetryExplorer.net