Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PERSEPHONE, SELECTION, by CHARLES DERENNES


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PERSEPHONE, SELECTION, by                    
First Line: My eternal desire, my child, my friend
Last Line: Each is alone is time's immensity!
Subject(s): Memory; Persephone; Solitude; Proserpine; Proserpina; Loneliness


My eternal desire, my child, my friend,
By the old way I come to your house once more;
I glance along the sleeping woods before
The moon slips softly to the horizon's end;
The breeze bears to me the fragrance of vines,
Mist clouds from a pool where the stork inclines,
And from the lawns the shrills of insects blend.

When I was fifteen, and your mother beautiful,
There it was I dreamed, when you were by,
Of flying to screen our joy immutable
In a far-off land where none should rule save I.
Invaluable days! From woods and plain
Were wafted fragrance, and the birds' refrain;
And you smiled at me, without well knowing why.

I said, just as the night's dim tenderness
Played over my hair with quiet murmur of musk,
"Tomorrow, well-beloved, the breath of dusk
Will be upon my brow your hand's caress."
And brooklets purled in the solitude,
And the hours and the waters their way pursued,
As my soul grieved not, to a goal I might not guess.

What have we wrought of ourselves? The waters through
The chiming hours flow, and we have worn old
Together. Through pride or fear I have never been bold
To kiss—to make silent glances speak to you.
It's late now, it is too late, I fear,
To hope to take one road from here—
And now I bid you lastingly, adieu.

But since at last I am strong to turn away
From the future hidden on night's unsparing breast,
I seek you as a comrade on the quest
Of bygone lands that I achieve today.
I come to your home to my childhood hours
And your great dogs, in its quiet bowers,
Have heard my steps, and known, and do not bay.

Ah! Now the dream is triumphant. ... You stand in the gloam
And give the word for the ineffable feast;
Before me an unknown universe is released
Where nothing lingers of your natal home;
Already, for us pilgrims two,
The sky, such as we never knew,
Spreads over the peaks of space its crystal dome.

This stream, that rolls its silken course to me,
Surging from the present we have left,
Seems to be joining, through my memory's cleft,
The land of unbound night where flows Lethe.
What endless peace this evening!
And how, with our remembering,
Each is alone is time's immensity!





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