“Unlike are we, O princely Heart!” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning Wednesday, May 9 2012

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“ 

 

       lll. Unlike are we, O princely Heart! 
 
               Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
               Unlike our uses and our destinies.
               Our ministering two angels look surprise
               On one another, as they strike athwart
               Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
               A guest for queens to social pageantries,
               With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
               Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
               Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
               With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
               A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
               The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
               The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—
               And Death must dig the level where these agree.

 

 

                                                Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

 

 

 

this was the Nineteenth Century of course with high drama 

and overt sentimentality running amok, look at any of Dickens’

heartwrenching urchins and orphans, for instance, that’s

Romanticism 

 

the Twentieth Century determinedly picked it up, especially

after the First World War, opera became Broadway, get over it

the clarion call, life’s short, enjoy it 

 

here’s George and Ira Gershwin’s ”Let’s Call the Whole Thing 

Off” a much more Twentieth Century resolution 

 

granted Elizabeth is not on the verge of leaving her husband,

who will remain, despite her protestations, ever true and devoted,

and she knows it, but albeit both their “ministering two angels

look surprise/ On one another, as they strike athwart/ Their

wings in passing”, both couples seem ready enough to 

move on

 

and only Death will dissolve their differences, “dig the level

where these agree”, East is East and West is West, she says, 

and Yin will never be Yang, Death alone will level the playing

field of our terminally divergent destinies

 

thanks for that, Elizabeth  

 

 

 

“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off“ 

 

Things have come to a pretty pass,
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that.
Goodness knows what the end will be,
Oh, I don’t know where I’m at…
It looks as if we two will never be one,
Something must be done. 

 

You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther,
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther,
Let’s call the whole thing off!
You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto,
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let’s call the whole thing off!
But oh! If we call the whole thing off,
Then we must part.
And oh! If we ever part,
Then that might break my heart!
So, if you like pajamas and I like pajahmas,
I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajahmas.
For we know we need each other,
So we better call the calling off off.
Let’s call the whole thing off!

 

You say laughter and I say lawfter,
You say after and I say awfter,
Laughter, lawfter, after, awfter,
Let’s call the whole thing off!
You like vanilla and I like vanella,
You, sa’s'parilla and I sa’s'parella,
Vanilla, vanella, Choc’late, strawb’ry!
Let’s call the whole thing off!
But oh! If we call the whole thing off,
Then we must part.
And oh! If we ever part,
Then that might break my heart!
So, if you go for oysters and I go for ersters
I’ll order oysters and cancel the ersters.
For we know we need each other,
So we better call the calling off off!
Let’s call the whole thing off! 

 

                        George and Ira Gershwin

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

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“I love your verses” – Robert Browning‏ Saturday, Apr 28 2012

I am overwrought, a letter from Robert Browning to
Elizabeth Barrett Browning congratulating her on her
poetry, and essentially declaring his, ultimately
legendary, love, they hadn’t even met yet, no wonder
I love Robert Browning   

later she would write her“Sonnets from the Portuguese“

he would become, well, of course, him

 

 

“January 10th, 1845
  New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey  

  I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,–and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,–whatever else, no prompt matter-of- course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to  remember how I have been turning again in my mind what I should be able to  tell you of their effect upon me–for in the first flush of delight I thought I would  this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration–perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of herafter!–but nothing comes of it all–so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this  great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew… oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat and prized highly and put in a book with a proper account at bottom, and shut up and put away… and the book called a ‘Flora’, besides! After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time; because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought–but in this addressing myself to you, your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogher. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart– and I love you too: do you know I was once seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning “would you like to see Miss Barrett?”–then he went to announce me,–then he returned… you were too unwell — and now it is years ago–and I feel as at some untorward passage in my travels–as if I had been close, so close, to some world’s-wonder in chapel on crypt,… only a screen to push and I might have entered — but there was some slight… so it now seems… slight and just-sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be! 

 

Well, these Poems were to be–and this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself. Yours ever faithfully Robert Browning“ 

 

 

recently I saw a show, an opera cabaret they called it, the

Sonnets from the Portuguese” had been set to music, for

soprano, mezzo, tenor, and baritone, two men, two women,

music by a local composer, lyrics of course by Ms Barrett

Browning

 

except for the first piece, the prologue, the letter above  

 

can you even dig it, for me cerebral nirvana 

 

 

what the opera cabaret lacked in polish it made up for in

evident devotion, nor did the music disappoint, an esoteric

idea had been brought to heartfelt life enough to entertain

and indeed to inspire

 

I’m now reading the poems 

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

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Olivier Messiaen – “Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum” Sunday, Apr 8 2012

just in time for Easter here is something from
Olivier Messiaen, whom I consider to be, after
Shostakovich, the most important composer of
the Twentieth Century, and may one day, with
more distance, prove to be, of the two,

preeminent 

  
Messiaen, a devout Catholic, wrote specifically
to the glory of the Catholic God, an interesting
return to the music of the Baroque period, and
earlier, when the Church sponsored essentially
all the arts  

 

perhaps Messiaen is also a precursor - the “Et

exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum“, which
I’m presenting, or, in my humble Latin,”In 

Anticipation of the Resurrection of the Dead“,

is from 1964 – of the resurgent fundamentalism
we’ve been witnessing in all churches,

synagogues, mosques, in our own times

 

“Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum“, is
not at all Romantic, not even Impressionistic,
two world wars have been fought since, man  

has stepped on the unglorious moon, God even

died in the early sixties leaving us to reinvent

our own future, a time of youth and flowers,

and great indeed expectations, as it turned out  

 

the even profound assumptions of the earlier

order however, in the language of music

represented fundamentally by beat and tonality, 

hadn’t worked, couldn’t work anymore, having

been manifestly discredited, women had received 

the vote, financial and sexual independence,

traditional authority had been categorically

overthrown, there was no going back

 

 

Richard Strauss had already suggested this new

broader horizon, in 1896, with his “Also Sprach 

Zarathustra“, a mighty work, made famous, even

unforgettable, by the movie  ”2001: A Space   

Odyssey“, when the very sun bursts upon the

intergalactic universe to its interstellar strains

 

but Messiaen takes you even further into the
reaches of the infinite 

 

I couldn’t help thinking of a more adult Miró -

the individualized elements - but more profoundly 

metaphysical, I have rarely seen, heard, something

so transfixing, powerful, even the silences between

movements, there are five, are riveting

 

 

happy Easter

 
Richard 

 

 

 

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“The Connoiseur” – Norman Rockwell‏ Thursday, Feb 9 2012

       

                                        ”The Connoiseur“ (1962)
 
                                               Norman Rockwell
 
                                                       ____   

serendipitously trolling Rockwells after sensing his spirit in a

poem I’d just been reading I happened upon this marvelous

piece, an homage of course to Jackson Pollock, perhaps the

most successful of the Abstract Expressionists

 

but lurking behind the obvious surface of this painting it was

easy to recognize also another glaring, though not as explicit

maybe, tribute, misted perhaps by the transformational

permutations of context and time, wherein a seed becomes

a tree, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, to no less an iconic 

masterpiece than Caspar David Friedrich‘s “Wanderer Above  

a Sea of Fog“, the work we just, a blog or so ago, explored

 

both look upon their own idea of a new horizon

 

and a Pop Art stab at an Abstract Expressionist through a

High Romantic is a cute trick, witty, wonderful, wise

 

 

it’s an easy step to a literary counterpart from there, Keats’ 

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” nearly automatically

comes to mind, another iconic Romantic new dawn

 

               Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

                   And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

                   Round many western islands have I been

               Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

               Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

                   That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

                   Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

               Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

               Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

                   When a new planet swims into his ken;

                Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

                   He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

               Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

                   Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

 

 

Beethoven, were I to go to music, is always, especially in his

later works, contemplating new dimensions, new worlds, he

more than any other composer is a metaphysical explorer

 

maybe also Pink Floyd

 

who’ve taken me to their own also exalted musical galaxies, 

awesome commanding perspectives, transcendental heights,

to my own “wild” indeed “surmise / Silent, upon a peak in”

my version of “Darien” 

 

 

Richard 

 

psst:  Chapman’s Homer   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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happy Hallowe’en Monday, Oct 31 2011

this poem by Longfellow requires no introduction, apart
from to say that it’s perfect
 
 
happy Hallowe’en 
 
Richard  
 
              _________________   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Haunted Houses

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses.Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,–

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

        

                                  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

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about poems Monday, Jun 28 2010

a while ago, around a piece I’d sent purporting to be a poem,
a friend asked, can a poem have only two lines 
 
what do you think, I answered, can it, was it 
 
which is to say a poem is in the eye of the beholder 
 
 
what would you call the following strophe, it is worth considering, the more you define what you mean by a poem, the more, like angels, like miracles, you find them, the more, soon, you find your own, the more suddenly they’re everywhere 
 
 
Richard 
 
                         ___________________
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    A Hand

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat’s yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin’s smoothness, not ink. The maple’s green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.  
 
 
                                    Jane Hirshfield

 

 

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“Once and Upon” – Madeline Gleason Monday, May 31 2010

having got up on the wrong side of my Monday morning, I wasn’t to be moved by even poetry, but like a morning prayer I began to read this one, as I do one, even two, even many, every morning
 
I was enchanted, I hope you are too 
 
 
Richard 
 
psst: compare e.e. cummings for childlike innocence and fancy, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” for instance
           
  
                          ___________________

                                                                                                                                                                                  

Once and Upon

                                                                                                                                                                             Cross at the morning
and at waking,
with a mourning for summer,
she crossed the bridge Now
over the river Gone
toward the place called New
to begin her Once Upon.

Once and Upon
my daddy long legs
walked in a web of work
for my sisters and me,
as Mother spun round
with silver knives and forks
in a shining of pans,
a wash of Mondays
and plans
for our lives ten thousand weeks.

To cross the bridge Now
over the river Gone
toward the place called New
to begin her Once Upon,
in a mourning for summer, she moved
to write her right becoming
and find her true beloved.

Snippets and tags of Gone,
criss-crossed as retold,
beggared the strumming
of fresh rhythms
that should have stirred her becoming.

Once and Upon
she ate the plum
and from a full mouth
disgorged the pit
into her hand
while Mother spun as she canned
peach and plum in season –
the land, holy Mother to
the plentiful fruit.

To cross.
But where should her steps lead
away from the river?

Through a desert she hurried,
thirsting she ran
to reach becoming,
passed three water holes
but never saw them,
so eager was she to reach
outward evidence
of her inward drawing.

Sisters of grace,
comely, sea-washed,
with blond shell hair and skin,
whirling with intermittent passion
amidst daddy long legs
and Mother awash
among the underthings,
boys shouting and running,
swaggering and dying
for the sisters’ charms.
AMEN!

Tops a-spin in a dying dance.
Yoo Hoo, Fatty! Buck!
Hi, Pete! Hello, old Gene!

Cross at the morning,
summer crossed with the beginning
of gold,
a sea of brown leaves swirling.

And no trees bent down
to whisper their wisdom
for her becoming.
Ah! Now! Ah! Gone! Ah! New
Ah! Once Upon!  

                     

                         Madeline Gleason 

              

                     

                  

             ___________________________

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“Trouble” – Matthew Dickman‏ Thursday, Apr 29 2010

                                                                                                                                                                              after the great hiatus of the Middle Ages Descartes declared “I think, therefore I am“, and set the modern world in motion, the Age of Reason, the Era of Human Rights 
 
but even Shakespeare some seventy years earlier had given voice already to the consequent existential dilemma, by way of Hamlet in his “To be, or not to be“, the moral dilemma of the individual before existence – “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” – and the abyss of eternity, a question up to that point forbidden on dire pain of heresy  
  
                                                                                                                                                                         Emily Dickinson touches on the subject famously, others also of equal authority, but here is something I thought true, touching, beautiful, and ultimately inspiring for anyone who’s delved that deep  
 
                                                                                                                                                                   Richard 
  
  
                       ______________________
  
 
Trouble   
 
                                                                                                                                                                        Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother’s house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the “H” in the HOLLYWOOD sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous
for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
 

                                                     Matthew Dickman 

             

                        ____________________________________

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sowing poems Saturday, May 30 2009

since April, National Poetry Month, and a flurry of commemorative throughout poems, one at least a day sent out by a dutiful and diligent moderator, I’ve carried in my pocket at her inspired, I think, suggestion not one but two poems, one per side per page, to scatter indiscriminately as raindrops, it was recommended, anywhere

I cannot help but think that these inadvertent seeds will somehow somewhere flower
 
they needed to be accessible, I thought, not trite, distinct enough as well to be quickly unforgettable, by definition nearly therefore profound
 
one described a poet finding intimations of perfection in the song of a nearby thrush, thereby inspiration and an instant recuperative salve
 
the other takes you into the heart of any poem
 
both to my mind are brilliant

 
I’ve been leaving them in restaurants beside my less august of course tip 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Richard
 
 
                 __________________________

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   The Poet with His Face in His Hands
 
 
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need any more of that sound.
 
So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
 
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
 
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
 
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
 
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
 

                                     Mary Oliver
 
 
          _______________________________
 

How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual

 
First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
      and don’t even notice,
      close this manual.
 

                      Pamela Spiro Wagner
 

     

       _____________________________

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The Creation of the World Wednesday, Mar 18 2009

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     though I’d been reading a not unaccomplished version of Ovid‘s “Metamorphoses“, thrilling already at much of it, for the sake of comparison I happened upon this other utter masterpiece
 
the pedigree is impeccable, an array of the most illustrious English poets of the eighteenth century in concert around a mighty translation of one of poetry’s crowning works, Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve, “and other eminent hands”, according to the web page, do the work, and it is masterly
 
read on, from the very first book of fifteen, its beginning, its genesis
 
 
Richard
 
                   ____________________________   
 
 
The Creation of the World

Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
‘Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc’d from Nature’s birth, to Caesar’s times.
 
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav’n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv’n,
And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav’n.
Thus disembroil’d, they take their proper place;
The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder’d, by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num’rous throng
Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form’d the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bad the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in Earth are swallow’d up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu’d, are lost.
He shades the woods, the vallies he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

And as five zones th’ aetherial regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign’d:
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt th’ extreams, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
The grosser near the watry surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder’s voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
Bound as they are, and circumscrib’d in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent);
And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
Pleas’d with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T’ invade the frozen waggon of the North.
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th’ unwholsom year.

High o’er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav’n design’d;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
Purg’d from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.

Scarce had the Pow’r distinguish’d these, when streight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn their heav’nly place.
Then, every void of Nature to supply,
With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.

A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design’d:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heav’nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain’d th’ aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From such rude principles our form began;
And earth was metamorphos’d into Man.

   

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