FAREWELL oh mocking Wind! No more I mix Thine airy substance with my world, the Tree: Farewell, oh Carbon, that I cannot fix, And Oxygen, that I no more set free! They tell me I have helped the trunk to grow, The roots to suck the earth, the boughs to fork, The fruits to ripen -- well, it may be so, But I am dying, and shall soon be cork. Dead, sapless cork! yet I remember still My moist and merry life in windy March; How green I was! how full of chlorophyll! But soon it shrivelled, leaving only starch. Blest epoch! when transparent and elastic, My membrane scarce restrained its endoplast, When, homogeneous, semi-fluid, plastic, My vital molecules rotated fast. Dry as I am, I once was young and tender, Alive with chemic yearnings; then, alas! What thoughtless joy was mine, in spring tide splendour, To decompose carbonic acid gas! Oh, had I sunk to inorganic slumber, And left the atoms to their gaseous glee! The greatest pleasure of the greatest number My life may serve -- but what is that to me? Backward I look, as o'er a fearful chasm, To days when I rejoiced to live and grow; Now less and less becomes my protoplasm, My nucleus divided long ago. My wall grows thicker, dryer -- oh to issue From this dark prison, where compressed I dwell, To live, no more a part of any tissue, But a primordial protoplasmic cell! A cell amoeboid, drifting from its mother, Naked and houseless in the cruel storm, Having no aid of sister or of brother, Nor any cellulose to keep it warm; Yet having freedom! Nay, the dream I banish, The time of cell-division long is past; Slowly and surely, all my contents vanish, My walls are waterproof -- I'm cork at last! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JOHN WILKES BOOTH AT THE FARM (JANUARY 12, 1848) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE LONELY DEATH by ADELAIDE CRAPSEY MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN by THOMAS HARDY SHERMAN'S IN SAVANNAH [DECEMBER 22, 1864] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES STORY OF THE GATE by HARRISON ROBERTSON |