Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO MY BODY, by EDEN PHILLPOTTS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO MY BODY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Without beginning and without an end
Last Line: Aught that may bring a smile for brothers yet unborn.


WITHOUT beginning and without an end
Endures the everlasting dust
Of stars and men, still changing, as it must,
Into such shadow shapes as circumstance may send.

Cometh a farewell hour when we shall part
And I surcease, while you continue;
For immortality was ever in you:
You are intrinsical to nature's changeless heart.

Your lime and water built me strong and sure—
A thing to bend, but not to break;
Little enough to give and much to take;
Welded to play a part and for a span endure.

If chance had willed to habit this our life
In adamant and tempered steel,
Hundred upon a hundred years might wheel
Before man's dwelling-place were done with thought and strife.

A synthesis of centuries had been
Enough for wisdom; age on age
Had lit, perchance, his lengthened pilgrimage
With understanding clear and prescience serene.

But few the years that roll to make his day;
Frail are the walls of his brief home
And short the journey he may hope to roam
Before the final storm that crumbles up the clay.

Fore-knowing which, his meagre dole he spends
In strife and passion, waste and war,
In shifts and strivings to defeat the Law,
In every mad device to speed unfruitful ends.

While Reason, winging beyond space and time,
Still cries that wondrous man shall mount
Till not the far-flung universe can count,
Or mightiest sun reveal, a spirit more sublime.

Cantle of earth, we'll wish each other well.
This throb of living yet called me
Is, of your everlasting destiny,
A fleeting mote wherein your permutations fell.

Turn now to cloud, to foothold for the corn,
To moonlit foam of woodland fountain,
To flower-light upon a mead, or mountain—
Aught that may bring a smile for brothers yet unborn.




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