Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BISCLAVERET, by ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: In either mood, to bless or curse Last Line: The masses for our soul's full grace. Alternate Author Name(s): O'shaughnessy, Arthur W. E. Subject(s): Mankind; Nature; Human Race | ||||||||
Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan, Garwall I'apelent li Norman. Jadis le poët-hum oïr, E souvent suleit avenir, Humes plusurs Garwall devindrent E es boscages meisun tindrent. MARIE DE FRANCE: LAIS IN either mood, to bless or curse, God bringeth forth the breath of man; No angel sire, no woman nurse Shall change the work that God began: One spirit shall be like a star, He shall delight to honour one; Another spirit he shall mar: None shall undo what God hath done. The weaker holier season wanes; Night comes with darkness and with sins; And, in all forests, hills, and plains, A keener, fiercer life begins. And, sitting by the low hearth fires, I start and shiver fearfully; For thoughts all strange and new desires Of distant things take hold on me; And many a feint of touch or sound Assails me, and my senses leap As in pursuit of false things found And lost in some dim path of sleep. But, momently, there seems restored A triple strength of life and pain; I thrill, as though a wine were poured Upon the pore of every vein: I burnas though keen wine were shed On all the sunken flames of sense Yea, till the red flame grows more red, And all the burning more intense, And, sloughing weaker lives grown wan With needs of sleep and weariness, I quit the hallowed haunts of man And seek the mighty wilderness. Now over intervening waste Of lowland drear, and barren wold, I scour, and ne'er assuage my haste, Inflamed with yearnings manifold; Drinking a distant sound that seems To come around me like a flood; While all the track of moonlight gleams Before me like a streak of blood; And bitter stifling scents are past A-dying on the night behind, And sudden piercing stings are cast Against me in the tainted wind. And lo, afar, the gradual stir, And rising of the stray wild leaves; The swaying pine, and shivering fir, And windy sound that moans and heaves In first fits, till with utter throes The whole wild forest lolls about: And all the fiercer clamour grows, And all the moan becomes a shout; And mountains near and mountains far Breathe freely: and the mingled roar Is as of floods beneath some star Of storms, when shore cries unto shore. But soon, from every hidden lair Beyond the forest tracts, in thick Wild coverts, or in deserts bare, Behold They comerenewed and quick The splendid fearful herds that stray By midnight, when tempestuous moons Light them to many a shadowy prey, And earth beneath the thunder swoons. O who at any time hath seen Sight all so fearful and so fair, Unstricken at his heart with keen Whole envy in that hour to share Their unknown curse and all the strength Of the wild thirsts and lusts they know, The sharp joys sating them at length, The new and greater lusts that grow? But who of mortals shall rehearse How fair and dreadfully they stand, Each marked with an eternal curse, Alien from every kin and land? Along the bright and blasted heights Loudly their cloven footsteps ring! Full on their fronts the lightning smites, And falls like some dazed baffled thing. Now through the mountain clouds they break, With many a crest high-antlered, reared Athwart the storm: now they outshake Fierce locks or manes, glossy and weird, That sweep with sharp perpetual sound The arid heights where the snows drift, And drag the slain pines to the ground, And all into the whirlwind lift The heavy sinking slopes of shade From hidden hills of monstrous girth, Till new unearthly lights have flayed The draping darkness from the earth. Henceforth what hiding-place shall hide All hallowed spirits that in form Of mortal stand beneath the wide And wandering pale eye of the storm? The beadsman in his lonely cell Hath cast one boding timorous look Toward the heights; then loud and well, Kneeling before the open book All night he prayeth in one breath, Nor spareth now his sins to own: And through his prayer he shuddereth To hear how loud the forests groan. For all abroad the lightnings reign, And rally, with their lurid spell, The multitudinous campaign Of hosts not yet made fast in hell: And us indeed no common arm, Nor magic of the dark may smite, But, through all elements of harm, Across the strange fields of the night Enrolled with the whole giant host Of shadowy, cloud-outstripping things Whose vengeful spells are uppermost, And convoyed by unmeasured wings, We foil the thin dust of fatigue With bright-shod phantom feet that dare All pathless places and the league Of the light shifting soils of air; And loud, mid fearful echoings, Our throats, aroused with hell's own thirst, Outbay the eternal trumpetings; The while, all impious and accurst, Revealed and perfected at length In whole and dire transfigurement, With miracle of growing strength We win upon a keen warm scent. Before us each cloud fastness breaks; And o'er slant inward wastes of light, And past the moving mirage lakes, And on within the Lord's own sight We hunt the chosen of the Lord; And cease not, in wild course elate, Until we see the flaming sword And Gabriel before His gate! O many a fair and noble prey Falls bitterly beneath our chase; And no man till the judgment day, Hath power to give these burial place; But down in many a stricken home About the world, for these they mourn; And seek them yet through Christendom In all the lands where they were born. And oft, when hell's dread prevalence Is past, and once more to the earth In chains of narrowed human sense We turn,around our place of birth, We hear the new and piercing wail; And, through the haunted day's long glare, In fearful lassitudes turn pale With thought of all the curse we bear. But, for long seasons of the moon, When the whole giant earth, stretched low, Seems straightening in a silent swoon Beneath the close grip of the snow, We well-nigh cheat the hideous spells That force our souls resistless back, With languorous torments worse than hell's To the frail body's fleshly rack: And with our brotherhood the storms, Whose mighty revelry unchains The avalanches, and deforms The ancient mountains and the plains, We hold high orgies of the things, Strange and accursèd of all flesh, Whereto the quick sense ever brings The sharp forbidden thrill afresh. And far away, among our kin, Already they account our place With all the slain ones, and begin The Masses for our soul's full grace. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOW MUCH EARTH by PHILIP LEVINE THE SHEEP IN THE RUINS by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH THE CONQUERORS by PHYLLIS MCGINLEY THE MARMOZET by HILAIRE BELLOC MEN, WOMEN, AND EARTH by ROBERT BLY BROTHERS: 3. 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