Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE REVENANT, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE REVENANT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It was at tunis, in the shop
Last Line: The ghost of man.
Subject(s): Ghosts; Hallucinations And Illusions; Supernatural


IT was at Tunis, in the shop
I told you of, where women stop,
And falls the perfume, drop by drop,
That first he came,
Who in my own flesh clotheth him,
And drugs my soul with memories dim,
And fills my body to the brim,
A perfumed flame.

I know new meanings in the rose,
Old channels in my sense unclose,
Along my nerves the music goes
Of ancient time;
And I am changed to what has been, --
Silk-robed, and turbaned with the green,
I try the thin edge damascene
Of secret crime.

To leaner sheaths my spirit shrinks,
And long-forbidden pleasures drinks;
The mindless life that never thinks,
Crumbles my soul;
And o'er the ruined yellow wall
Of what I was, there groweth tall
A flower, whose incense like a pall
Doth round me roll.

I hear a padding on the stones,
There comes a terror in my bones,
A throttling stills my crumpled moans
And little cries;
And who is he sits in my place,
A lither soul, a softer grace,
A lore of ages in his face,
And world-wise eyes?

The Revenant! in every clime
He uses me to be the mime
Of weird things acted in the time
Of long-ago;
What mysteries of heart and brain,
What forms of beauty, forms of pain,
The sun shall never see again,
Revive and glow!

A thousand years has he been clay
Who from me takes the soul away,
And in my body makes his play,
Do what I can;
Strange visitant, in myriad shapes,
Who in myself my being apes!
Ah, nowhere now my soul escapes
The Ghost of Man.





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