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TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. AT MENTONE, by EDWARD CARPENTER Poet's Biography First Line: Why speak ye not, ye beautiful lands and seas Last Line: Why utterest not the voice we long to hear? Subject(s): Cemeteries; Death; Earth; History; Mankind; Peasantry; Graveyards; Dead, The; World; Historians; Human Race | ||||||||
WHY speak ye not, ye beautiful lands and seas, Hung like a magic curtain in the light? What dumbness holds you, O divine vast Earth? Ye stretches of smooth bare rock, dotted with cactus and aloe, Rising so bold in the sun, from your deep dark gorges below; Ye pine woods on the mountain flanks; And ye, ye terraces of endless labor, planted with vine and lemon and the abounding olive, With peasant cots and cabins here and there, and cisterns where the frogs croak night and day; Why speak ye not, why speak ye not? Why with that strange prophetic glance of yours Hang ye in heaven there, magic lands and seas, Nor say the word we wait for? The Campanile and red roof of the village church show out seaward against the sky-line; and the cypresses stand sentinel in the cemetery on the hill above; The borage-flowers beneath the lemon branches catch the hues of sea and sky; runnels of water sparkle through the grass by the pathside; the scent of orange-bloom is in the air; Far back into the valleys stretch the gray shade and gloom of the olive-yards; and the narrow tumbled alleys of the mountain-villages are like huge rock-burrows of human beings; The grizzled wrinkled old man on his little plot of ground, and the young man beside him, work doggedly on with their mattocks through the heat of the day; The broad-bosomed placid-eyed girl tends her flock of goats on the higher ledges. Ye leafing fig-trees, like silver candelabra of green flame! And ye, pink-blossoming peaches, dainty bright! And ye, ye immemorial aromatic herbs and bushesarbutus, myrtle, lavender, rosemary, thymetrampled to perfume by the feet of long-forgotten races; And thou, blue bay, with myriad points of light, and sky above with subtle answering quiver, And high far crests of gleaming purple crag, and snows beyond, Flaming, all flaming in the light! Why speak ye not? Cave men and women and children, on your sides by the sea-shore, Your long skulls resting still in the palms of your bony hands, A sccre millenniums lying in the same position Why wake and speak ye not? Why utter not the thoughts that were, for you, the world? Ye dead that build the rocks, and are the Earth, and fill, without a void, the crystal air! And Thou one dead (for each and all of us)one dead for whom our life we'ld gladly give [Thou whose remembrance passes through all sights and sounds, transforming and transforming them] Why through the veil of this material texture showest thou not, dear soul of things, thy face? What dumbness holds you? O divine vast Earth, Why utterest not the voice we long to hear? | Other Poems of Interest...HOW MUCH EARTH by PHILIP LEVINE THE SHEEP IN THE RUINS by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH THE CONQUERORS by PHYLLIS MCGINLEY THE MARMOZET by HILAIRE BELLOC MEN, WOMEN, AND EARTH by ROBERT BLY BROTHERS: 3. AS FOR MYSELF by LUCILLE CLIFTON |
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