Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


THE VOICE OF DEMOGORGON by JOHN COWPER POWYS

First Line: PALSIED AND FEVERED AND BLIND
Last Line: "YE WILL WAKE ONE DAY!"" IT SAITH."
Subject(s): DEATH; GOD; SILENCE; SLEEP; SOUL; DEAD, THE;

Palsied and fevered and blind,
Driven by madnesses strange,
Aching and loathing it all,
In our planetary hospital,
Day and night we cry for a change.

And the wind-tossed woods and the wild
Waters that wash our shores,
Unappeased, unreconciled,
Cry also without a pause.

And sometimes, between the souls
Of our desperate mad-house men
In the hospital of the world
And these, there strangely rolls
A tremor of mutual rage;
And a mutual curse is hurled
At the forehead of God; and then Silence.

And, in the silence, a breath --
Not of man, nor of God, nor of these,
Nor of birth, nor of life, nor of death,
Nor of madness, nor yet disease, --
A strange weird voice from the deep
That opens below all depth; --
"Lo! such are the dreams of sleep.
Ye will wake one day!" it saith.



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