Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPRING MORNING, by HENRI CAZALIS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPRING MORNING, by                    
First Line: Adream I paced the roseate path of dawn
Last Line: Lest I beheld them empty of god's love.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lahor, Jean
Subject(s): God; Life; Love; Morning; Spring


ADREAM I paced the roseate path of dawn
And, by the quivering gold of ocean drawn,
I wandered blind until the surges' roll
As woman's sighs woke pity in my soul.
-- Methought the waves spilt light of limpid eyes.
White clouds of birds revolved in rapturous cries,
Then plummet-wise dropped sheer from heaven's dome
Into the surf that laughed in peals of foam;
And all things sang, amate with morning's mirth.
Vast loomed the land that circled o'er the earth.
The azure lapped an island by its shore
That o'er its face a veil of vapour wore,
As damask rose on lapis-lazuli;
And, high in heaven, in lilied purity,
Rose cities, vague as memories of the mind,
From massive chains of mountains intertwined,
Whose snows on silk of dim celestial bournes
Their virgin candour mingled with the morn's.
Below -- some peach-trees pricked the sky with flowers.

Thus might I still have charmed the lagging hours,
When suddenly before me in the street
A blinded child, with sullied hands and feet,
Smirched all my garnered loveliness. So frail
It was, so shrunken, wan and pale,
I turned away. A tattered garment hung
From bony shoulders. God! that one so young
Should know such misery. Its mother lay,
One told me, in the pest-house. None could say
What lazar sired the child. And eve and morn
Brought no caress to soothe its life forlorn.
The sun alone embraced its loathsomeness,
For men who succoured want yet shrank from this.
And, seeing it so blighted in Life's Spring,
I thought of Sin's grim hawk e'er hovering
Above Man's head, the all-forgotten meres
Of silent sorrows ne'er bewrayed in tears.
I thought of that blind Chance that governs birth,
The fathers' sins that brand the babes of earth
And of the nameless horrors of life's dread,
The myriad chastisements unmerited;
And by that waif whose blindness seared my sight
I wished no more to see the waves' delight
Nor glory of the earth or heaven above
Lest I beheld them empty of God's love.





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