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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A MAN AGAINST TIME, by WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD Poet's Biography First Line: Names of vast cities off beyond your years Last Line: But for my faith in my abandoned peers. Subject(s): Cities; Sonnet (as Literary Form); Urban Life | |||
Names of vast cities off beyond your years -- Ahmednuggar, Bangkok, and Bangalore, Kerbela, Chinkiang, Kharkov, and Algiers, And Banyuwangi, Kostroma, Lahore; Names of vast cities off beyond my fears -- Shimonoseki, Santos, Singapore, Tananarivo, Saskatoon, Namirs, And Pernambuco, Nice, San Salvador; Names of vast cities off beyond our love -- Mosul, Mendoza, Tucuman, Dijon, Guadalajara, Pavia, and Rostov, Rosario, Santander, Edmonton . . . With Buddha-bells, spires, minarets -- more far Than our last moon or sessions with a star. I long to bore in earth and plunge in fire, For the one's darkness and the other's light, For tree-roots, for stone base of mountain height, For each telluric Under propping Higher; For core of flame inside its cone or spire, Where motion splits from motion out of sight, Which makes the sun and radiations right Whence plants get peace and animals desire. I long to plunge in fire and bore in earth -- But most for dead-folk. Dear, these elements Hold Druid whispers, roaring caravan, Battles and weddings, infants, music, mirth, And all abandoned feasts and parliaments Since graves and pyres have been the house of man. Though crippled, prisoned, white-haired, fifty-eight, My world a heap of ashes, splinters, shards, Until I die, by God, I'll stand up straight -- And when I die I want no flowers and cards. What have I seen? I've seen the Caesars come, The work of Athens and Rome's Senate free And parliaments of centuries stricken dumb, And upstarts spitting on democracy. I've seen man's speech, which Time had won for art Since Homer clear and clean and serving man Distorted, maimed, and in the insane mart The laurel-crown on every charlatan. I'll stand up straight, not to rebuke these years But for my faith in my abandoned peers. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THINGS (FOR AN INDIAN) TO DO IN NEW YORK (CITY) by SHERMAN ALEXIE THE CITY REVISITED by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET TEN OXHERDING PICTURES: ENTERING THE CITY WITH BLISS-BESTOWING HANDS by LUCILLE CLIFTON THE CITY OF THE OLESHA FRUIT by NORMAN DUBIE DISCOVERING THE PHOTOGRAPH OF LLOYD, EARL, AND PRISCILLA by LYNN EMANUEL MY DIAMOND STUD by ALICE FULTON TOM MOONEY by WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD TWO LIVES: CONCLUSION. INDIAN SUMMER by WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD |
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