Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE LOST GODS ABIDING, by WILLIAM ROSE BENET


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LOST GODS ABIDING, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The old gods, the bright and glorious gods of a world at dawn
Last Line: They are not dead!


The old gods, the bright and glorious gods of a world at dawn,
Flushed with laughter and love, in marble symmetry throned on strength and pride,
Beneath the spell of the Lord of beautiful Life they still abide.
They are not gone.

They bowed their heads on their breasts, and became the hills,
Learning that sit at the knees of those marvelous mentors the skies.
Now they have learned. They are wise.
To nobler tasks they have set their stubborn wills.

Old gods, by eternal enchantment not passed
But imprisoned, that the ancient beauty might last,
Once, from starry heights higher than Olympus, a Voice stilled your wrangles and storms.
Silence fell on your forms
In the height of the power of your riotous reign, that ye learn
Of loam, grass-blade, and lichen and fern
The true stature of godhood -- the charity, silence, and peace.
Do they cry your release,
Idle egoists, cognizant not of how infinite far
Ye are more than ye were?

Ye liege lords of the Being whose gentleness raised you to him,
Afar on the dim
Sunset-cinctured horizon ye sit, with new carcenets of stars,
Shaming Man from his dull, daily spoilings and wars,
From his impotent belying desires, as, through twilight's hushed dream,
Drinking deep of the twilight that stills and absolves, doth he come
From weary, soul-rending, grim laboring tiredly home,
To your kindly tribunal come home!

Philosophers grown so grave, understanding, and kind;
Inspired, not resigned;
With exception alone of some shaggy-wild, boisterous, and bluff
Young Bacchus in rough,
Who, unharnessed as yet of restraint,
Shakes erupting his wrath and his might
On the flame-terrored night,
Subsiding only in grumbling ire
And gurgling fire
At the gentle protest of the wise moon, his saint, --
How your bosoms have suckled strong wills!
How true heroes have sprung from you, hills!
And from far at the last, from what far wastes of forest or foam
Ye have drawn them home,
That once, if for only once more
They might shout on your summits and stride with your clouds for a floor,
Reel back at the thunder and grapple in fierce love and wild
Your strength to their breasts, as a Titan were grasped by its child,
Yea, for only once more
That their hearts might be fired by your sunsets, that in shame they might kneel and adore,
That the gyves of the world might fall from them and dominant, free,
They might stride with your lightnings and chant with your thunders and plunge through your snows
as a sea!

Oh majestic gods immured,
That ask not nor speak, but are still
And in silence fulfill
All the ministries taught you by God;
Are filled with his vastness, fulfilling in it the soul-dream of each single earth-sod,
The hour of the flower and the life of the grass and the growth of the gourd;
One day they shall come, oh ye mountains;
One day your rich guerdon falls due!
They shall flee unto you,
Man, woman and child, from their self-decreed doom,
From self-woven destructiveness, crying on Science no more,
With their reeling minds stilled as a tomb,
To your door -- to your door,
To be purged, to be bosomed, to bathe in your high air's peace-fountain.
Was not Sinai a mountain?
They shall come bearing weaknesses, ailments, and griefs and unrests
To be clasped to your breasts, --
And the Lord, from his watch-tower above,
Cry "The old gods no more! Not a dream of them left for grief-trove!
But behold, oh behold, in their majesty, power and peace,
The new gods, the great, strong, merciful gods of release --
True gods of my mercy and love!"

The old gods, the bright and beautiful gods of the ages fled,
Flushed with laughter and love, through godlike agony dowered with pride and pain,
In the far-throned mountains and hills of our world their glories forever remain.
They are not dead!





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