Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, STANZAS ON POETRY, by HERBERT TRENCH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

STANZAS ON POETRY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here in the pentecostal woods are seen
Last Line: "until the keyboard's motions die away."
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


HERE in the Pentecostal woods are seen
Mid glens of floating odors, shifting sheen,
Motionless yews and scintillating green
Of birches young, and here in wandering mood
Our feet brushed through the drifts of listless leafage
When quick and flame-like Spring was on the bough.

Distinct each budding tongue could tell its tale
And underfoot the tide of flowers, that pale
Firmament, so eternal and so frail,
Powdered the woody bosoms of the commbes,
And everywhere infinity was hinted,
Stealing in clouds of gems into the air.

And here, in stillness of this stately place,
I asked my musing friend to lift the grace
On me of her immortal speech and face,
And to reveal how in this roaring world
A man may tune his lips, and she replied:
"So sing, that nothing of thee shall grow old!

"This is your end, and this is your reward,
To become attuned to the universal chord
Wherein all life makes answer to its Lord.
O spectator of the sun and night and sea
Great waters with a song-born ocean-sighing
Revolve their everlasting floods through thee!

"Lift up thy head! tear off the servile mask,
Salute the dead, and take on thee their task!
In thee man's sleeping powers assemble. Ask!
Choose -- wilt thou like a cow-boy ride savannahs?
Attend the Delian high solemnity?
Unbury Egypt, or by Newton kneel?

"Be thou, thrice-hot forewafted heart and sight
A winged creature, questing for delight,
Released from bonds, and by augurial flight
Before the gaze of the earth-hungering horde
Show thou the pass over Caucasus, the barrier!
Or divine thou the sunk waters of the Moon!

"Chant like the head of that slain king they found
The night after the battle by sweet sound
In a clump of rushes on the battle-ground,
That sang at his beheaders' feast so true
They would kneel to the pallid lips upon the pillar
For saving wisdom and clear prophecy!

"Inscription on the lightless dungeon be!
Far trumpet that may set the prisoner free!
Ray from the battle-ship on Futurity!
Soar, thou blue mosque of lapis-lazuli
Whose mortar with rare incense hath been mingled,
Fragrant for ever at the sultry noon!

"In thee Man's choir assembles, and finds tongue!
Thy soul like Roland's horn of echoes flung
Must seize the mountains that it gropes among,
Must strike and must betray the Invisible --
Black peaks that like a crowd of humbled Gods
Attend the benediction of the Dawn!"

"Goddess," I cried, "the task is far too great!
Spare, overwhelming energies of Fate!
Turn aside -- shoulders cannot bear your weight;
Descend not on us weaklings, us the living!"
"I speak to Man!" she said. "The mill-wheel turns:
Between thee and thy son lies but a sleep.

"Is not the statue inwardly impaled
On iron, when 'tis set aloft and hailed
For beauty? Smiling have my noblest failed!
Playful as Socrates, the ungainly seer,
Or the glorious Persian, whom when Balkh was stormed
Turanians at his blackened altar slew.

"There is no light except the light they saw!
There is no song except that song of awe,
The slow-unscrolling palimpsest of Law,
Where here and there a mighty word ye read
(O rushlights seeking on the battlefield!)
In haste, by the hasty taper of yourselves!

"Thy song shall be imperfect, never fear,
Seeing but the half, the half of it is here;
Yet fall'n to the heart out of the atmosphere
(If the symbol in thy hands ring metal true)
Flake soft electric touches of that Life
Whose heart-beats are sun-rises, slow and clear.

"Do not thy windows every morning hail
The sheen of Thames, curved in the forest vale?
What splendour, though its reach from vision fail!
More than a brief arc you may never scan
Of the sweep o' the world, or the destiny of man,
Yet now begins to dawn on you the curve --
The sense of scale, the orbit's formula.

"Love, Courage, Truth, these are; and while these stand
Who can say Gods inhabit not this land?
If wise men sifting light from Saturn's band
Discern the rainbowed metals there, what wonder
If these passions in your dust shine back to Saturn,
If the Soul, regnant in you, reign everywhere!

"And if the chorded metals and the fine
Elements, in ethereal discipline,
Be spaced about the orchestra divine
So thou canst gauge a gap, and prove the curve
Celestial -- even unveil the dark companion
Of devious orbs -- may not thy soul intense

"In its unfrontier'd and illumined mood
Hear, far beyond its borders, as it would,
At the due interval, with certitude,
Transcendent harmony, transcendent Good?
The Gods themselves are pipes in one great organ
Wherethrough the nations send their shuddering breath
Until the keyboard's motions die away."





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