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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PONTOOSUCE, by HERMAN MELVILLE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Crowning a bluff where gleams the lake below Last Line: And warmth and chill of wedded life and death. Subject(s): Memory; Pontoosuce (lake), Massachusetts | |||
Crowning a bluff where gleams the lake below, Some pillared pines in well-spaced order stand And like an open temple show. And here in best of seasons bland, Autumnal noon-tide, I look out From dusk arcades on sunshine all about. Beyond the Lake, in upland cheer Fields, pastoral fields and barns appear, They skirt the hills where lonely roads Revealed in links thro' tiers of woods Wind up to indistinct abodes And faery-peopled neighborhoods; While further fainter mountains keep Hazed in romance impenetrably deep. Look, corn in stacks, on many a farm, And orchards ripe in languorous charm, As dreamy Nature, feeling sure Of all her genial labor done, And the last mellow fruitage won, Would idle out her term mature; Reposing like a thing reclined In kinship with man's meditative mind. For me, within the brown arcade -- Rich life, methought; sweet here in shade And pleasant abroad in air! -- But, nay, A counter thought intrusive played, A thought as old as thought itself, And who shall lay it on the shelf! -- I felt the beauty bless the day In opulence of autumn's dower; But evanescence will not stay! A year ago was such an hour, As this, which but foreruns the blast Shall sweep these live leaves to the dead leaves past. All dies! -- I stood in revery long. Then, to forget death's ancient wrong, I turned me in the deep arcade, And there by chance in lateral glade I saw low tawny mounds in lines Relics of trunks of stately pines Ranked erst in colonnades where, lo! Erect succeeding pillars show! All dies! and not alone The aspiring trees and men and grass; The poet's forms of beauty pass, And noblest deeds they are undone Even truth itself decays, and lo, From truth's sad ashes fraud and falsehood grow. All dies! The workman dies, and after him, the work; Like to these pines whose graves I trace, Statue and statuary fall upon their face: In very amaranths the worm doth lurk, Even stars, Chaldaeans say, have left their place. Andes and Apalachee tell Of havoc ere our Adam fell, And present Nature as a moss doth show On the ruins of the Nature of the aeons of long ago. But look -- and hark! Adown the glade, Where light and shadow sport at will, Who cometh vocal, and arrayed As in the first pale tints of morn -- So pure, rose-clear, and fresh and chill! Some ground-pine sprigs her brow adorn, The earthy rootlets tangled clinging. Over tufts of moss which dead things made, Under vital twigs which danced or swayed, Along she floats, and lightly singing: "Dies, all dies! The grass it dies, but in vernal rain Up it springs and it lives again; Over and over, again and again It lives, it dies and it lives again. Who sighs that all dies? Summer and winter, and pleasure and pain And everything everywhere in God's reign, They end, and anon they begin again: Wane and wax, wax and wane: Over and over and over amain End, ever end, and begin again -- End, ever end, and forever and ever begin again!" She ceased, and nearer slid, and hung In dewy guise; then softlier sung: "Since light and shade are equal set And all revolves, nor more ye know; Ah, why should tears the pale cheek fret For aught that waneth here below. Let go, let go!" With that, her warm lips thrilled me through, She kissed me, while her chaplet cold Its rootlets brushed against my brow, With all their humid clinging mould. She vanished, leaving fragrant breath And warmth and chill of wedded life and death. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest... |
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