Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LAMENT OF THE CORK-CELL, by CONSTANCE CAROLINE WOODHILL NADEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LAMENT OF THE CORK-CELL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Farewell oh mocking wind! No more I mix
Last Line: My walls are waterproof -- I'm cork at last!
Subject(s): Cork


FAREWELL oh mocking Wind! No more I mix
Thine airy substance with my world, the Tree:
Farewell, oh Carbon, that I cannot fix,
And Oxygen, that I no more set free!

They tell me I have helped the trunk to grow,
The roots to suck the earth, the boughs to fork,
The fruits to ripen -- well, it may be so,
But I am dying, and shall soon be cork.

Dead, sapless cork! yet I remember still
My moist and merry life in windy March;
How green I was! how full of chlorophyll!
But soon it shrivelled, leaving only starch.

Blest epoch! when transparent and elastic,
My membrane scarce restrained its endoplast,
When, homogeneous, semi-fluid, plastic,
My vital molecules rotated fast.

Dry as I am, I once was young and tender,
Alive with chemic yearnings; then, alas!
What thoughtless joy was mine, in spring tide splendour,
To decompose carbonic acid gas!

Oh, had I sunk to inorganic slumber,
And left the atoms to their gaseous glee!
The greatest pleasure of the greatest number
My life may serve -- but what is that to me?

Backward I look, as o'er a fearful chasm,
To days when I rejoiced to live and grow;
Now less and less becomes my protoplasm,
My nucleus divided long ago.

My wall grows thicker, dryer -- oh to issue
From this dark prison, where compressed I dwell,
To live, no more a part of any tissue,
But a primordial protoplasmic cell!

A cell amoeboid, drifting from its mother,
Naked and houseless in the cruel storm,
Having no aid of sister or of brother,
Nor any cellulose to keep it warm;

Yet having freedom! Nay, the dream I banish,
The time of cell-division long is past;
Slowly and surely, all my contents vanish,
My walls are waterproof -- I'm cork at last!








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