Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. WINGS, by EDWARD CARPENTER



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. WINGS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Wings, wings
Last Line: And I understood the meaning of the wings.
Subject(s): Birds; Eagles; Freedom; Speech; Wings; Liberty; Oratory; Orators


WINGS, wings!
I beheld the young leaves breaking from the buds and poised on the tips of
the branches;
I saw a squadron of anemones in the meadows all waving in the wind as
impatient to take flight together;
I looked at the acorn buried in the earth, and lo! it divided and put forth
two seed-wings; and the embryo plant resembled the penis and dual testicles of
man and the animals;
And the starling like-shaped flew overhead through the trees, and the lark
hung, a cross, in heaven;
And the butterfly flew by—emblem of the soul—and the bee hung
downwards in the wind-flower cup;
And I stood by the hive in the garden and marked how from its lips the bees
shot like arrows into the wide valley below;
And I stood in the great assembly and marked how from the decisive lips of
the orator the winged words darted and transfixed the audience;
And I saw on the Central American savannahs the half-wild horses racing and
bounding together down to the rivers or resting in the shade of the trees;
The light-footed tireless wolf I saw, and the eagle soaring over the
mountains; and I watched the moth glide from the entrails of the caterpillar,
and the gnat all perfect and stainless from its watery case;
And within myself and under the skin—deep down—I felt the wings
of Man distinctly unfolding.
And as I lay on the great hill-side the kisses of the sun alighted on me
after their long flight, and rested; and the birds warbled through the midday;
and the flowers and the earth itself and the great tree-boles sent forth their
incense-swarms of atoms;
And behold! beyond the mountains and the great clouds floating by I beheld
dim vast and aerial the figure as of a man with arms outstretched over the
universe;
And as I gazed—lo! slowly all these other things swam with me and
became incorporate with that figure, and the clouds floated and the streams ran
down from ledge to ledge within it;
And the trees with their square arms took on a new signification, and the
little seeds with their twin cotyledons were for an emblem, and I saw whither
the birds were hastening, and the direction of the index of all generation;
And the starlings flew through the spaces of its thoughts, and the anemone
squadrons trembled along its flanks;
And the horse; galloping over the plains could not escape the plains they
galloped over, nor the light-footed wolf its quest;
And the eagle could not deny its own form as it soared over the
mountains—nor I the knowledge of that which was unfolding within me:
And I understood the meaning of the wings.





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