LAUREATE of corruption, on whose brow The bay-leaves are all slimy with the worm! Thou art a nightingale whose songs affirm The canker in the rosebud, from a bough Of the dark cypress warbling. Some strange vow Thy spirit must have taken before birth To some strange god, to desecrate the earth With visions vile and beautiful as thou. We loathe thee with the sure, instinctive dread Of young things for the graveyard and the scar. And though God wept when Lucifer's great star With its long train cried from the deeps blood- red, Still must we name thee with the second dead, For when the angels fall they fall so far! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: TENNESSEE CLAFLIN SHOPE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS GOOD-BYE DOROTHY GAYLE: THE ROAD TO BUFFALO by KAREN SWENSON TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY by ROBERT BURNS ABOU BEN ADHEM by JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT A LIFE-LESSON by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY THE TWO GLASSES by ELLA WHEELER WILCOX THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION; A POEM. ENLARGED VERSION: BOOK 1 by MARK AKENSIDE |