Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A NEO-PAGAN, by LEE WILSON DODD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A NEO-PAGAN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Your praise of nero leaves me cold
Last Line: The mill of god with his angels in't!
Subject(s): Nero, Roman Emperor (37-68 A.d.); Paganism & Pagans


Your praise of Nero leaves me cold:
Poems of porphyry and of gold,
Palatial poems, chill my heart.
I gaze -- I wonder -- I depart.
Not to Byzantium would I roam
In quest of beauty, nor Babylon;
Nor do I seek Sahara's sun
To blind me to the hills of home.
Here am I native; here the skies
Burn not, the sea I know is gray;
Wanly the winter sunset dies.
Wanly comes day.
Yet on these hills and near this sea
Beauty has lifted eyes to me,
Unlustful eyes, clear eyes and kind;
While a clear voice chanted --
"They who find
"Me not beside their doorsteps, know
"Me never, know me never, though
"Seeking, seeking me, high and low,
"Forth on the far four winds they go!"

Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems,
Your Saracenic silver, your
Nilotic gods, your diadems
To bind the brows of Queens, impure,
Perfidious, passionate, perfumed -- these
Your petted, pagan stage-properties,
Seem but as toys of trifling worth.
For I have marked the naked earth
Beside my doorstep yield to the print
Of a long light foot, and flash with a glint
Of crocus-gold --
Crocus-gold!
Crocus-gold no mill may mint
Save the Mill of God --
The Mill of God!
The Mill of God with His angels in't!





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