Christopher Brennan - Interlude: The Window And The HearthChristopher Brennan - Interlude: The Window And The Hearth
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Twice now that lucid fiction of the pane
dissolves, the sphere that winter`s crystal bane
still-charm`d to glass the sad metempsychose
and futile ages of the suffering rose —
what, in its halt, the weary mood might show.
Earth stirs in me that stirs with roots below,
and distant nerves shrink with the lilac mist
of perfume blossom`d round the lure that, kist,
is known hard burn o`erflaked and cruel sting.
I would this old illusion of the spring
might perish once with all her airs that fawn
and traitor roses of the wooing dawn:
for none hath known the magic dream of gold
come sooth, since that first surge of light outroll`d
heroic, broke the august and mother sleep
and foam`d, and azure was the rearward deep;
and Eden afloat among the virgin boughs
fused, song-jewel sudden, and flesh was blithe with vows
to tread, divine, under the naked air;
nor knew, alas! self-doom`d thro` time to bear
lewd summer`s dusty mock and roses` fall,
and cynic spring, returning, virginal.
Chimaera writhes beside the tragic flame
of the old hearth: her starting jaws proclaim,
a silent cry, the craven world`s attaint.
Her vans that beat against a hard constraint
leaps, as the coals jet in a moment-spasm:
yet their taut ribs hurt not the serpent chasm
of shade, that slips swift to its absent den,
to settle, grimlier, at her throat again.
And, starward were their prison-roof increas`d,
no sun that bathes him for a dewy east
would light her mail, above the tainted air
a meteor-dazzling gem, but the red flare
kindle disastrous on our burning eyes
from where the sullen embers agonize,
once the heart`s rose-flusht dream of living gold.
Therefore her croup, thro` many a lapsing fold,
is bound into the iron`s night, to check
the frenzy that contorts her charging neck:
her life is flitting with the fitful red
splashing her flank as `twere her courage bled
to curdle with the void, whose metal-cold
shall seal her gone, a block no art shall mould.
And now the shining tongues that sprang to lick
the obscene blackness in are tarnisht thick:
insidiously thro` each blank pane the dark
invades from space, vast cemetery: one spark
flies up, the lessen`d ghost of flame: her flight
stiffens, and is a settled piece of night.
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