My Maker shunneth me: Even as a wretch stricken with leprosy, So hold I pestilent supremacy. Yea! He hath fled far as the uttermost star, Beyond the unperturbed fastnesses of night And dreams that bastioned are By fretted towers of sleep that scare His light. Of wisdom writ, whereto My burdened feet may haste withouten rue, I may not spell -- and I am sore to do. Yea, all (seeing my Maker hath such dread), Even mine own self-love, wists not but to fly To Him, and sore besped Leaves me, its captain, in such mutiny. Will, deemed incorporate With me, hath flown ere love, to expiate Its sinful stay where He did habitate. Ah me, if they had left a sepulchre; But no -- the light hath changed not, and in it Of its same colour stir Spirits I see not but phantasmed feel to flit. Air, legioned with such, stirreth, So that I seem to draw them with my breath, Ghouls that devour each joy they do to death, Strange glimmering griefs and sorrowing silences Bearing dead flowers unseen whose charnel smell Great awe to my sense is Even in the rose-time when all else is well. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONG: SO OFTEN, SO LONG I HAVE THOUGHT by HAYDEN CARRUTH HOW THEY GO ON by JAMES GALVIN A PLANTATION BACCHANAL by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. PURKAPILE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |