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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BITTER SERENADE, by HERBERT TRENCH Poet's Biography First Line: Fate damned you young. Death young would now frustrate you Last Line: Enough; you let it die. | |||
Fate damned you young. Death young would now frustrate you. I have but lived--as alchemists for gold-- In my mad pity's flame to re-create you, Heavenly one, waning, cold! Dark planet, to your sleepless desolations Whereto no ray serene hath ever gone Life might have come with my poor invocations; You might have loved, and shone! The lanterns and the gondolas have vanished, Gone the uproar and merry masquerade, From the lagoons the burning loves are banished, All your canal is shade. Magnolia-bloom is here my only candle, White petals wash and break along the wall, While this poor lute, the lute with the scorched handle, Is here to tell you all. Do you remember--but what soul remembers?-- I carved it from a log of quaintest tone, Snatched half-consumed out of a great hearth's embers; The great hearth was your own. By God! to the chords wherewith you then endowed us-- Something in you gave frame and strings a voice-- Now you must listen in the hours allowed us; Listen, you have no choice! . . . The very stars grow dread with tense fore-feeling Of dawn; the bell-towers darken in the sky As they would groan before they strike, revealing-- New day to such as I! There comes a day too merciless in clearness, Worn to the bone the stubborn must give o'er, There comes a day when to endure in nearness Can be endured no more! A man can take the buffets of the tourney, But there's a hurt, lady, beyond belief: A grief the sun finds not upon his journey Marked on the map of grief . . . Was I not bred of the same clay and vapour And lightning of the universe as you? Had I the self-same God to be my shaper Or cracks the world in two? It cannot be, though I have nought of merit, That man may hold so dear, and with such pain Enfold with all the tendrils of the spirit, Yet not be loved again. It cannot be that such intensest yearning, Such fierce and incommensurable care Starred on your face, as through a crystal burning, Is wasted on the air It cannot be I gave my soul, unfolding To you its very inmost, like a child Utterly giving faith (no jot withholding), By you to be beguiled. No. In rich Venice riotous and human, That shrinks for me to sandbanks and a sky, Love such as that I bear you must be common. Enough; you let it die. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A WINTER SONG; TO ALICE MEYNELL by HERBERT TRENCH AN ODE TO BEAUTY by HERBERT TRENCH BE NOT AFRAID by HERBERT TRENCH CHANT SUNG IN DARKNESS by HERBERT TRENCH CHORUS AT THE GREEN BEAR INN by HERBERT TRENCH DAUGHTERS OF JOY by HERBERT TRENCH DEIRDRE DANCING by HERBERT TRENCH |
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