Though -- statued to a savage innocence That wills to seize and, seizing, to devour -- You hold your head stately as a flower Of cactus, your wit tempered and made tense To parry, as with medieval lance, Life at its point, yet with a dread surmise As one who fears old ambush you advance -- Rimmed in the golden distance of your eyes A gone horizon reeling -- and the stench Of death -- and only your eyes' roving spark, Not all the rain of centuries can quench, Two points of amber fire in the dark. . . . And, nailed with stars above some Tyrian tree, Night stretching a vast cross of ebony. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: FATHER WHIMSETT by EDGAR LEE MASTERS ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY by GEORGE SANTAYANA AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL A COLONIAL MORNING DREAM by KAREN SWENSON SELLING HER ENGAGEMENT RING by KAREN SWENSON INDIAN SUMMER by SARA TEASDALE |