THERE is nothing to be said for you. Guard Your secret. Conceal it under your hard Plumage, necromancer. O Bird, whose tents were "awnings of Egyptian Yarn," shall Justice' faint, zigzag inscription— Leaning like a dancer— Show The pulse of its once vivid sovereignty? You say not, and transmigrating from the Sarcophagus, you wind Snow Silence round us and with moribund talk, Half limping and half ladified, you stalk About. Ibis, we find No Virtue in you—alive and yet so dumb. Discreet behavior is not now the sum Of statesmanlike good sense. Though It were the incarnation of dead grace? As if a death mask ever could replace Life's faulty excellence! Slow To remark the steep, too strict proportion Of your throne, you'll see the wrenched distortion Of suicidal dreams Go Staggering toward itself and with its bill, Attack its own identity, until Foe seems friend and friend seems Foe. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DEATH STANDS ABOVE ME by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR THE BRIDGE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW CIRCUS AT NIGHT by MADELEINE AARON TO ANACREON by ANTIPATER OF SIDON TRIOLET: THOSE VIOLETS BLUE by H. W. BANKS HEAVEN AND EARTH by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING THE WANDERER: 1. IN ITALY: CONDEMNED ONES by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |