Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONHOOD, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONHOOD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Fragments of being, mystically flung
Last Line: For god has a son!
Subject(s): Jesus Christ


Fragments of being, mystically flung
Forth from safety, from tenderness,
Unequal and young,
Into the surge and the brutal stress,
How can you ever guess,
Proud sons,
The trembling love that pursues you,
That silent and secretly runs
Far behind you and stretches its hands and woos you?
How can you think the stupid thought
Of the past, which is less than naught
In your forward minds,
Eagerly bent on adventurous ways,
On the teasing, beautiful path that winds
Through mysterious, challenging days
To the unseen joy and the unheard praise?
Yours is the future; yours is the glory to come
When the sphinx's lips are no longer dumb,
When the gates of the city are open wide,
When the leaping tide
Of music and fragrance and power has caught the world,
And the flag of the soul, unfurled,
Floats free, free, free,
Over the jubilant land and the farthest sea.
If you could know
The toilsome way you must go,
If a seer could foretell
The darkness, the anguish, the horrors of hell
Barring the path of your beautiful dreams,
If the prudent could show
How empty and vain are the cheating gleams
That beckon you on,
Then the magic of youth were gone,
The wonder and glory of youth,
Proudly spurning the pitiful truth,
And giving itself, with abandonment splendidly wise,
To the infinite sureness of lies!
For these are sons,
These creatures that break with reason and fact,
These daring, impossible ones,
That do not think but act.
And nothing less is the meaning, the function of sons,
The wrench away,
The folly that shuns
Hindrance of helpful hands,
That crudely stands
Masterful, shamelessly gay,
Shouting his own fierce No and his new glad Yea.
And we who doubt,
Shake our heads at the mocking and irritant shout,
Mutter the maxims of years,
Talk with our fears,
Catch at the flying robes of our jubilant one,
Ah, let us pause and remember with sudden awe
That the mystic law
Of sundering, futureward sundering, reaches to Him
Who sees eternity's outermost rim,
Who knows all hours of his endless day,
As the infinite, eddying currents run,
Yet dared to send on his separate way
A gallant Being of love and light
To scorn the past,
To grasp at empty dreams and hold them fast,
To mock at fears and achieve the impossible right --
For God has a Son!





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