Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SWAN, by YAKOV POLONSKY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SWAN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The quaver'd plea of the fiddle; gardens glowing
Last Line: An ink-black sky; and quavering went the fiddle.
Subject(s): Birds; Swans


THE quaver'd plea of the fiddle; gardens glowing
With sudden flares: a to-and-fro of crowds:
All other things awake, but no wind blowing
Under the roof of night to unpack the clouds.

Beneath blind heavens a blind green pool, whereon,
Sequestered by the reeds from human eye,
In the merciful dusk a wounded swan
Qbscurely agonising waits to die.

So near quite spent, he cared no more to mark
(His misanthropic shyness grown so tame)
How jetting rockets tore the veil of dark
And o'er him broke the beads of sprinkled flame.

Nor cared to hear the pulse of the slow stream,
Or soft discoursing of a neighbour fount:
His eyes fast shut, his brain is all a dream
Of mounting high beyond where clouds can mount.

Ah, what a fugue shall launch his wing,
Sky-rover enfranchised of glory!
And ah! the song, the song he'll sing
In the empyrean auditory!

His inmost, holiest meditation,
Untuned for man -- a swan 'mid swans;
And kindred throats of his white nation
Shall echo him in antiphons.

A moment more -- it comes! it comes! --
And the large freedom-song is born:
His beating vans (they stir!) like drums
Salute the approaches of the morn!

-- So fared his trance. But not a feather stirr'd;
The imagined notes ebbed falteringly away.
With flights unflown and song unsung, the bird
Died in the fitful darkness where he lay.

A bush trembled; the reeds half waved asunder
To let a breath of air steal through the middle:
The garden grinned and coruscated under
An ink-black sky; and quavering went the fiddle.





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