Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PSYCHE'S LAMP, by ADA ALDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PSYCHE'S LAMP, by                    
First Line: Exquisite spirit, rudely caught and tangled
Last Line: For hear! Above the clouds a skylark singing.
Subject(s): Thomas, Edith Matilda (1854-1901)


Exquisite spirit, rudely caught and tangled
In brazen spheres that jangled;
A skylark with bruised wings and clear song strangled.

Sad-hearted day by day
She went her lone, brave way.
Within that wave-worn wraith
Of small and beaten faith
A flame forever glimmered through the damp,
But it was Psyche's lamp --
Her searing lamp turned on divinest things
Until they spread their bright departing wings.

She could not drink the waters of sweet springs
As a child quaffs their crystalline delight;
With reason as a knife
She slit the veils of life.

Bereft and stricken in grief's last repining,
She dwelt too near the stars to see their shining.
But in some tranced dreaming of the night
Her soul rose winged and white,
And throbbed with melody as the first star.

Fine in her discontent
Of things that are,
She scorned her cerement --
The silvery bell
That was her own thin shell;
And trusted tremblingly in the surprise
Of hearing, seeing, without ears or eyes.
"I hate this ashen cloud about my head,
Of raven, once," she said.

(Proud, lowly head that wore a violet crown,
Dropping shrunk petals if the singer bowed,
Or hurried through the windy, clattering crowd,
Cloaked in her viewless purple of renown.)

The radiant dust of Hellas was her own,
And tones from that far zone
She wooed to her unlistening midland town.
Poor starry head, unwillingly dragged down
To that dry earth
That claimed in death and birth!
I cannot see it there, but lifted high
As when, against the sky,
With one shy hand arrested on her lip,
She let her gay smile slip
And follow me far down the drowning street.

When the sharp tempests beat,
We will remember her and hear her sing:
"I shall step lightly forth to meet the spring ..."
Flooded with love her airy world is ringing;
For hear! above the clouds a skylark singing.





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