Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WINGED YOUTH; ON A BOY SWINGING, by DOROTHEA LAWRANCE MANN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WINGED YOUTH; ON A BOY SWINGING, by                    
First Line: He swings / on joyous wings
Last Line: The hermes feet shall lead him to the arches of the day.
Subject(s): Swings; Wellesley College


HE SWINGS
On joyous wings,
Upward borne toward an empyrean,
Through worlds majestic and cerulean,
Up to the azure bars
Windowed with big, gold stars,
Down swift and far,
Down where dim cities are,
Down past the giant trees
Whose vast tops spurn the aspiring breeze,
Sailor of storied seas,
Our swinger fares.

What do the deep eyes see?
How does he journey free
Far from the haunts of men?
Captain of a faery barque,
Gloriously he threads the dark
Mazes of hill and glen.
His are the Hermes feet
Sandalled but by joy and fleet --
Fleeter than a summer down.
His are the lips that call the morn
Down from her castled heights of revelry --
Goddess Aurora.
Not for the dawn he stays,
His are the pathless ways.
His the hand that guides the barque.

Naught that touches the brown earth
Serves to waken his mad mirth,
His are the years which cleave the stars!
He is youth magical,
Joyous, majestical,
Panoplied with powers from untrammelled nights and days.
Where should he 'suage his eyes
Save in the pathless skies,
Only the horizon bounds the freedom of his ways.
Who would touch earth and be
Bound when he might be free,
Turn his feet from star-roads to the cities of the world?

Not for youth's golden years
The spear-path and the wine-press and the coronet of fears,
But the magic of the open way!
Through the portals of the limitless
The Hermes feet shall lead him to the arches of the day.





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