Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BY WHAT SPELL, by HORTENSE KING FLEXNER



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BY WHAT SPELL, by                    
First Line: In what school then sit the dead
Last Line: Deserter, by what spell?
Subject(s): Spells


In what school then sit the dead,
Who persuades and conjures them,
Torn from earth, distraught, alone,
Grafted on what towering stem,
To forget, to turn the head,
To deny what they have known?

By what language are they healed,
They who still remember breath?
Who has taught them to embrace
The neat disloyalty of death,
And with powerful hand has sealed
Their eyes to the beseeching face?

And of you, the one who came
Most lately to this unseen state,
Must I think of you as well,
Content and dazed and separate,
Unlistening where I cry your name—
Deserter, by what spell?





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