Classic and Contemporary Poetry
E.A.P.; ON THE FLY-LEAF OF WHITTY'S 'POE', by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY Poet's Biography First Line: In the proudest of the nations Last Line: And no poets there are born. Subject(s): Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849); Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
IN the proudest of the nations Was a wandering poet born; Skyward its accumulations Towered, from mine and forest torn; Never state was so victorious In world-plundering wars of gold; Never land so earthly glorious Of the conquering lands of old. From the star-bound pole of heaven That spins in lyric mirth, Where the Pleiads are, the Seven, Came that vagrant soul to earth; Echoes of some lost existence, Pre-natal melody, As of angels in the distance, Haunted his mortality. But because the poet ever Needs befriending, most of men, And his soul reposes never In the gross and citizen, From the moment that he quickened In the heavy air, The heavenly spirit pined and sickened Because no love was there. Spectral thoughts -- grim foes -- assailed him Only poets' minds evoke; Nought his beauty there availed him, Dying, stroke on stroke; Long his genius pleaded, pealing Melancholy chimes, -- As from Paradise came stealing The supra-mundane rhymes. Then his living turned to anguish Of the demon-driven storm, And men saw his glory languish Into one pale form, Ghostly, ghastly, -- and his heart was torn with Life's wan dream, Despair; And the beauty he was born with Faded in the sepulchre. The proudest of the nations Watched that starved power decay; Heard the maniac lamentations Where that soul of beauty lay. Now, men whisper, genius glorious Flees that barbarous strand forlorn, Lined with turrets, gold-victorious, -- And no poets there are born. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB AT GIBRALTAR by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY |
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