As it was promised so I beheld. From sun to sun wild beasts became as men. No longer swinging their great heads, they looked Amazed upon each other, saw the moon, The still, dumb trees. The air scarce bore the noise Of their rejoicings, their thick stutterings, The Babel of their unpent, labourned thoughts. Life-channels, old obliterate origins By man forgot, they subtly understood. Birds knew the wise mechanics of their flight, The beaver of its bridge, the bee its hive. Bears pondered on the habits of their kind. The lion kneeled before the spectacle Of its age-thwarted life by speech set free. The ape wrought curious tools for stranger arts; Knew not if to invent, or speak, or think Gave greater joy; threw off incumbrances Life loaded on him when the stars were young, And stood there in his glory, Lord of all, The peer of man in mind, beyond him far In gifts surendered by mankind or lost. Then even as I looked the dawn stole in, Eyes faded and great heads began to swing. Most pitiful of all and last to change The ape reluctant dropped its tools and fled Beyond the gates of consciousness, again A gibbering, furtive beast, by nature damned. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A TIME TO DANCE by CECIL DAY LEWIS DRIVING INTO LARAMIE by JAMES GALVIN CORTEGE by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON TOWERS OF SIMON RODIA; FOR HOWARD W. SWENSON 1903-1081 by KAREN SWENSON AFTER PARTING by SARA TEASDALE IN A STRANGE CITY by LOUIS UNTERMEYER THE LOVER MOURNS FOR THE LOSS OF LOVE by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS |