Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A DIZZYING SURMISE, by WILLIAM WATSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A DIZZYING SURMISE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: What if that fieriest substance - found so late
Last Line: When the loosed afreet towered against the spheres.
Alternate Author Name(s): Watson, John William
Variant Title(s): Sonnets To Miranda: 10
Subject(s): Beauty; Fate; Hate; Life; Love; Destiny


WHAT if that fieriest Substance -- found so late --
That cousin to the uranium of the sun --
Were proved a cause of all that we have done
And dreamed and been? A source of love and hate,
Vileness and valour, and beauty nobly great!
What if all this, ere Nature had begun
Man's fashioning, lay closed and hidden in one
Miraculous God-sown seed of Life and Fate?

Thus was the Genie of the Arabian tale
Sealed in a vial for a thousand years
Under the ocean, till a fisher's net
Drew forth the vial, and the fisher set
The captive free, -- but shrank amazed and pale,
When the loosed Afreet towered against the Spheres.





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