Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, REVELATION, by EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

REVELATION, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: Into the silver night
Last Line: And dares not clutch what love was half revealing.
Subject(s): Love


INTO the silver night
She brought with her pale hand
The topaz lanthorn-light,
And darted splendour o'er the land;
Around her in a band,
Ringstrak'd and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
And, flapping with their mad wings, fanned
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.

Behind the thorny pink
Close wall of blossom'd may,
I gaz'd thro' one green chink,
And saw no more than thousands may, --
Saw sweetness, tender and gay, --
Saw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry,
Saw braided locks more dark than bay,
And flashing eyes, decorous, pure and merry.

With food for furry friends,
She passed, her lamp and she,
Till eaves and gable-ends
Hid all that saffron sheen from me:
Around my rosy tree
Once more the silver-starry night was shining,
With depths of heaven, dewy and free,
And crystals of a carven moon declining.

Alas! for him who dwells
In frigid air of thought,
When warmer light dispels
The frozen calm his spirit sought;
By life too lately taught
He sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing;
Reels from the joy experience brought,
And dares not clutch what Love was half revealing.




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