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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN EPISTLE FROM CORINTH, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY Poem Explanation Poet's Biography First Line: Paul of tarsus, I have enquired of jesus Last Line: An upward gaze. . . . Subject(s): Corinth, Greece; Death; Jesus Christ; Dead, The | |||
Paul of Tarsus, I have enquired of Jesus And meditated much and read your words Directed to the wise Corinthians Of whom am I. There is much beauty in His life and therefore comfort, and there is beauty In that unreasoning rush of eloquence Of yours, so much it almost caught me up And made me Christian. Such is the power of faith Ablaze in one we know to be no fool! I watched you as you preached that day in Athens: You are no fool, nor saint, but one I judge Of intellect that somehow has caught fire And so misleads when it is shiningest. I had hoped to find in you or in your Christ Some answer to the questions that unanswered Slay our wills. . . . There's so much lost! Parnassus there across the turquoise gulf Still holds its rose and snow to the blown sun, But no young Phoebus guides the golden car, Nor will the years' returning loveliness For all its perfumed broidure bring again The Twelve to the bright mountain place they loved. The gods of Greece are dead, forever dead: The Romans substitute idolatry; And there's such peace and idleness in the world As gives the thinking powers full scope to soar, And soar they do, but in red-beaked bands That darken all the sun and nurture find On the Promethean bare heart of man. How strange to see the labor of the world Straining for plenteous food and drink and warmth, For ease and freedom and the right to choose, But winning these win only doubt and anguish! Is this accessory to our coming here? Is there no answer waiting to be found? I judge the struggle for perfection if Engaged in long enough, say thro' the years Of gorgeous youth, the ashen middle years, Will end in calm, a kind of stale content -- No gush and quiver in the leafless tree! But that's the body's dying, not the fight's Reward, old age not victory! Yet who, save those few souls and stern That passionate unto perfection walk The alien earth scornful and sure, Would pledge themselves to life-long virtue Except exchanged for happiness, here Or hereafter? Who, I ask and hear no answer. 'Twas for the few that Socrates had thought: Your Jesus had profounder bitterness And, wroth against a universal woe, Conceived a universal anodyne -- Heaven, his father's Kingdom, Paradise. Hence his success with slave and sick and poor -- The solace for their skimped experience They find in dreams of restitution and A promised land, whose king will dower and Reward their loyalty with bliss eternal. This promise of his kingdom and the immense Illusion that he had, shared still by you, Of coming once again and shortly to Select mankind for punishment or saving Are above all the concepts that ensure His following, which when the fact disproves Will fall away and be forgotten till His name will vanish and the careless years Hide with their passing sandals' dust his dream. Yet in this Jesus I detect always Something more true and sound and saving than The postulates of his philosophy. Compared with Socrates his intellect Lacked wonder, self-delight, sufficiency. The Athenian in his noblest eloquence Assumed himself a son of God, yet him I understood, somehow: it seemed at least Poetically true. But when your Jew Speaks of his father, all that I never learned Is near, I cannot think, but I can feel, And 'spite of me, I have the sense of wisdom Simpler and fruitfuller and wiser than All wisdom we had hardly learned before, That turns irrelevant and pitiful Much we had frayed and tattered our poor souls In guessing. Yet when I turn to you for counsel -- And who of his untutored band but you Is qualified in wide and leisured learning To parley equal-minded with a Greek? -- I find a blur of words, a wall of thought, That more completely hide the god I sense Than the fantastic patter of his humble Ignorant worshipers . . . Paul, Paul, I'd give My Greek inheritance, my wealth and youth, To speak one evening with that Christ you love And never saw and cannot understand! But he is dead and you alone are left, Irascible and vehement and sure, For me to turn to with the bleak bad question -- Do we then die? Or shall we be raised up? . . . There is the hope always of other life, After this choking room a width of air, A star perhaps after this sallow earth, After this place of prayer, a place of deeds. No man but in his heart's locked privacy Dares hope this muffled transiency we hate For its most bitter and ignoble failure Ends not with what our ignorance calls death. A Christ with promise of eternity And proof could Christianize a hundred hundred worlds! There are such glimpses of the never-seen, Such breathings from the outer infinite, The possible hath such nobility As makes us suppliants for further chance -- Not repetition, but more scope, O Powers! Yet better purposeless mortality Than this mad answer you proclaim to us. We shall rise up, you say: so far well said. This essence that disquieteth itself With less than truth, that will not tolerate The fare whereon 'tis fed, but sickens so For immortalities that it doth shape Of its own yearning -- piteously methinks -- Gods and a dwelling place of distant stars, This surely hath a strength beyond mere days! But then you add, with equal certainty, "There's too a resurrection of the flesh." This is your creed and final comfort, Jew, That these our gyves and chains are never slipped, That this captivity we thought a term Carks to eternity, do what we will! The impediments to every high resolve, The traitors to our nascent deity, The perfumed, warm, corporeal parts of us That drug to sleep or death the impetuous will, These are partakers of such after-life As our fierce souls may grievously attain! Tarsus, I'll not accept eternal life Hampered and foiled by this vile thing of flesh! There is no fire can burn it pure, no rain Can wash it clean, no death can scourge it slave! The spirit that is holier than light Its touch will stain, its vesture will pollute! You cannot understand, you are a Jew! Your pores, unsentient, have never drunk The perfume of a bush that's red by dawn, And were you here upon this roof tonight With Corinth at your feet, you'd never know It was a night of summer, never feel The straining on the slender leash of will At all the murmurs and warm silences. There's a girl's laugh . . . and footsteps loitering. You'd never guess why they are slow, nor hear The half-words breathed, nor smile to find yourself Wondering if the kiss were mouth or throat. . . . Perfumes! . . . The night-wind wakes but to caress, And kissing sleeps . . . the lover's way. . . . Gods, gods! This fool would have the harlots' mouth Immortal as the soul of Socrates! Forgive me, follower of Jesus. I Am Greek, all Greek; I know the loveliness Of flesh and its sweet snare, and I am hurt At finding nothing where I sought for much. O Paul, had you been more as other men Your wisdom had been wiser! Christ, perhaps -- But I was born too late and so miss all. I see no aim nor end. And yet myself Hopeless of aught of profit from the fight Fight on. . . . Perhaps there's something truer than The truth we can deduce. . . . And after all Our best is but a turning toward the stars, An upward gaze. . . . | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND OVERTONES by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY |
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