Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BURNING BUSH, by HERBERT S. GORMAN Poet's Biography First Line: He talks of kings and in his eyes at times Last Line: Glows like the burning bush across the night. | ||||||||
He talks of kings and in his eyes at times I catch parading banners tossing by. He puts to rout my gathering cloud of rhymes By smiling suddenly and lifting high His weather-beaten forehead to the sky. With speculative twists he throws the ball Of chatter with agility most spry And keeps the thread, nor loses it at all. His face is like old oak the sun has burned To mellow beauty, and his eye is such That if it suddenly on me is turned I am aware of things that matter much In analyzing why the common touch Of sight to sight means more than words may say, And why the earth may sometimes seem a smutch Of soot upon the lintel of the day. He grows in greatness to his words and I Diminish in their magic to an ear Existing solely for the thoughts that fly In colored ardency from him so near And I so far, thoughts longer than a year -- With wisdom heaped on wisdom, yet they pass As swiftly as a half-unconscious tear Dropped suddenly upon a heated glass. He hitches up his one suspender, chews Tobacco with a ruminating air, Dissects with equanimity the news Of warring nations, with a word lays bare The white nerve-centres of some great affair And solves a riddle that a statesman died To find the key to, turns a knowing stare Upon humanity -- and once he sighed. He sits upon this battered hulk, the earth, And plays with theory as men with dice. He knows the nations from their feeble birth In prehistoric fields of sliding ice. Through age and age he traces each device That man perfected for the sake of Man, And has no need to brood upon them twice, But places each within its proper plan. Incompetent he may be for a world Too eager of delight to know a seer Who reads the heavens as a sign unfurled And finds philosophy a spinning drear. But there are times I feel that gods are near And through the windows of his eyes a light, Auspicious, awful and divinely clear, Glows like the Burning Bush across the night. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MARCH-PATROL OF THE NAKED HEROES by HERBERT S. GORMAN THE LAST FIRE by HERBERT S. GORMAN THE LOST HEART by HERBERT S. GORMAN SCHOOLS OF LITTLE FISH by MARVIN BELL SHUT OUT by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE SHIPS by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH |
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