1 Is this hand stopped that commanded heavens: weep! Does this angel's foot unstirred know love For its enclosing stony bower, whose imagined flight it keeps 5 Locked in laurel and bay wrapped upwards to thighs that moved--- In gracing imitation lending what life keeps? Past still stars in a rose bolt of thought they wove Restless imaginings Has this youth resigned the reigning fury of its powers 10 That thoughtless as the cheating dream of sleep Reveals in repose the still undissipated glory of its hour? Does this temporal air unquiet lives possess And ache to burn through, trace its faded pageant yet? 2 15 This arcite find, in a world too plain for hating, This disturbless gem among coruscate wrecks of majesty That replenishes what autumn lessened with waiting Give back, O lambent statue,--- what we gave and give: Compeerless love that inhabits the spirit willing, exhaling 20 Noble chansons imputed by baser breath, and live! Nothing of that beauty in which you dwell, disdaining The choking sneers of drugged humanity, as light Disdains mud, through purer air illuminating What is best and nearest Heaven as the mind finds right 25 Interfusing loveliness with the manic grace of birth Forever arriving, to resurrected senses' uplifted might Blow the salt foam links of enduring hope and worth, Drowning continents of dread, enchaining the earth! 3 30 Become in waking what in slumbered stony limbs Lies composed and stolen: vigilant, universal, true! Let again the visionary eye white steeps climb Arching and overarching brightnesses to unknown blues That signal a universe at rest; O it sleeps 35 To be quickened by whatever comes to quicken you! My eyes in darkened contemplation close, or half-close, Against the mellow dying sun's half-extinguished ray. Those arms before me and that undimming eye turn liquid in the hush--- All I see's a vision, the eye that shifts in hallucinated misery 40 From its embalming grove, the countenance disentangled from its lush Confinement; the lips that speak in light the imagined joy May speak again, and now, as on humankind's first day. I see A death reversed, the spirit kindled that was ash, burning free! 4 45 O high and savage, wild spirit impel my voice Through this dross of world and rank habitation, Completing the impulse that visits without choice The divining mind of man, a crystal exhalation Pursuing all through the gross swamp of loss, and worse, 50 Until the ages-inhibited palace in a word is built, a consummation. Let not the invading dignity of God in awe Or foisting ministries of superstition linger To drop a pall on the inceptive brightness we would show: The individual in his tensile case is cause and stir of this--- 55 Of all the bellowing activity of world and whirl below, A principle aloft on the rapt pinions of his flight, the disdaining gaze forgetting each abyss. Never was the world into sonorous darkness cast, but yet A heralding dew did canvas its midnight branches in a net. 5 60 O pilot dawn that from chanting darkness vaults Your clear tight line of song and light Find a treble brightness in these words I choose and vaunt! Oceans cold and amber-black thin to skies of light And every denser, troubled atmosphere's dispersed, 65 Changed into tolled notes of this brave saying's might! Banished is the night, where frigid terror sweats its blasts Into the mind's receiving dark, dispelled The bitten hand, the frighted eye, the breath that draws its last: All in one groan to courageous laughter fall. 70 O light, o song, o life compelling swift and fast This torrent of my soul, in joy consume it all! Transform by my seed of light this globing black To cones of prophecy and victory that give life back!
From the collection "A Volcano Island"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.