WHEN sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee, I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast, The full moon poured her silhouette of me. Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too: Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight, Surpass the shapes they show by human view. On this brave world, where few such meteors fell, Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung. He suffered and descended into hell -- And comforts yet the ardent and the young. Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky, Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran: His utterance a moon-enchanted cry Not free from folly -- for he too was man. And now and here, a hundred years away, Where topless towers shadow golden streets, The young men sit, nooked in a cheap cafe, Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 3 by EZRA POUND COLUMBIAN ODE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE DARKLING THRUSH by THOMAS HARDY OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: OLD AGE by SOPHOCLES THE COW by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK AT MIDNIGHT by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ON A PORTRAIT by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD SONNETS OF MANHOOD: 37. NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) |