Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TERROR, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TERROR, by                    
First Line: No, I did not dare - but find no excuses, for my mind the poet in me impeaches
Last Line: Child.
Subject(s): Fear; Poetry & Poets; Soul


No, I did not dare -- but find no excuses, for my mind the poet in me impeaches
--

I did not dare to die in the pool that shows the sky on fire beneath the
beeches,

when I saw before me rise, to the zephyr's dolorous moan, the hypocrite with
downcast eyes,

the ghoul with velvet arm (one hand on my heart, and one pressed to my brow) --
the Terror

who, directing my scrutiny, this evening showed to me Hell, painted on that
mirror,

and there, in yonder glade, beneath the oak's dim shade, crawling running, all
astir,

the Phantoms of my soul, lone or in chains they were, on the far side of the
pool.

A glade? The cavernous rim, the dire, sepulchral sill, of Hell which cumbers,
grim,

The Tree of Good and Ill, kindled suddenly, whence rises the sputtering dew in
smoke,

on whose trunk, in that red light, Moses, upright, bent, upright, breaks the
Tables of the Law;

the Tree round which Virgil bears, bowed low beneath his yoke, Aeneas, who bears
Anchises

beneath the breath and brow of the Bard, that blinded roamer who sang of Troy,
old Homer,

eyes like cherries burst, dread ghost who towards his treasure fares, illumined
motes disposed

where the thunder flares and peals. Like a pet dog at his heels comes stoop-
shouldered Dante, struck

by the whips, that hate doth impel, of his heroes who scourge him well, and 'tis
the merest luck

if by a leap he can surmount the delirious group of Cervantes and Shakespeare

who 'neath the fetters stoop of Othello, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote and King
Lear.

Toward the steaming tarn he races o'er whose depths there swim the faces of
Milton and Lucifer,

where Baudelaire, rowed thereon by his cold Don Juan, in flames doth disappear

before the shallop fair upon which comes Moliere to fall, a statue of stone,

and that's all: the barque goes down. Remaineth gloom alone and at my side the
Terror

who, brusquely, by his pallor, forth from the forest wild chases me like a
child.





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