Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONG AGAINST NIGHT, by RUTH FORBES SHERRY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONG AGAINST NIGHT, by                    
First Line: Of this, indeed, be sure, even though reason
Last Line: A dissonance that warns the sea-bird home.
Subject(s): Night; Bedtime


Of this, indeed, be sure, even though reason
Rebuke the enamoured mind; even though taut
Asperities rim round with sordid treason
The dear allegiances the heart has bought --
I tell you, once having measured on blue air
The martial counterpoint of moon and tide --
(And you so quiet in the quick earth there)
Song like a savage wing will tear your side.

Stampeding blindly on the crest of night,
Where constellations arrogantly swarm,
Consider how the pigeon charts his flight,
Then weave your slender course above the storm.
Be mindful too, to sift the scarlet dusk
Leaving no music in the withered husk.

And since no litany can quite content
Your famished heart nor any song assuage
Your grief, I tell you this, lest you lament
The transiency of youth, the stab of age;
When tidal gates have loosed their bars of bronze,
The fugitive soul slips out along the quails
Of continents lit by flamingo suns
And softly carpeted by Pleiades.

Here you shall touch the very throat of song.
Aquarius, Aries, Libra, Virgo swinging
Around the Zodiac, and all along
The high meridian, creation singing.
And you but a bell, scattering under foam
A dissonance that warns the sea-bird home.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net