Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A MIDNIGHT ECSTASY, by THOMAS STURGE MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A MIDNIGHT ECSTASY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: From everywhere seen
Last Line: Nor soul not to all others free.
Alternate Author Name(s): Moore, T. Sturge


"FROM everywhere seen,
I cannot see.
My ray of light
Straight through the night
Has everywhere been
Save back to me.
One power is mine,
One only, to shine;
It is all that I am or do
Or think of or love."

-- It is fine, O star,
Alone, afar,
Absorbed, contented, true,
To dwell above
The divided wills,
The hope that kills,
And long, long ache that in man
Gnaws and is fed
In conscious strife
On self-planned life
That never has done all it can;
Whose gleam flickers, blurs red,
Never streams in straight line
Like that white shaft of thine.
Yet forth from self forgot,
From creature fused in act white-hot,
What power comes to re-create?
What joy goes froth to celebrate
The life that has been?
The wise world saith
Such act, such death,
From everywhere seen
Is blind like thee,
O act of light!
Rapt pure and bright
Is not thy being keen?
Hast thou no glee?

Want makes men what they are.
Can doer of a perfect deed
Have any need?
Success, like incapacity,
Require a fee?
Nay, it, like star,
Is what it gives..
Is that which lives
In our felicity,
The buoyancy of admiration,
Tingling health of all elation!
For, as dun cloth is bleached to white,
Exposed to worth men's hearts refine;
The lit give light,
The shone-on shine,
Grow clean, grow fair,
Transmute, absorbed in seeing,
To full responsive being..
Till joy be everywhere,
Yet nowhere any bounded glee
Nor soul not to all others free.





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