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Allen Tate - The Meaning Of DeathAllen Tate - The Meaning Of Death
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An After-Dinner Speech I rise, gentlemen, it is the pleasant hour. Darkness falls. The night falls.                               Time, fall no more. Let that be life time falls no more. The threat Of time we in our own courage have forsworn. Let light fall, there shall be eternal light And all the light shall on our heads be worn Although at evening clouds infest the sky Broken at base from which the lemon sun Pours acid of winter on a useful view- Four water-towers, two churches, and a river: These are the sights I give in to at night When the long covers loose the roving eye. To find the horror of the day a shape Of life: we would have more than living sight. Past delusions are seen as if it all Were yesterday flooded with lemon light, Vice and virtue, hard sacrifice and crime In the cold vanity of time.                                       Tomorrow The landscape will respond to jocund day, Bright roofs will scintillate with hues of May And Phoebus` car, his daily circuit run, Brings me to the year when, my time begun, I loitered in the backyard by the alley; When I was a small boy living at home The dark came on in summer at eight o`clock For Little Lord Fauntleroy in a perfect frock By the alley: mother took him by the ear To teach of the mixed modes an ancient fear. Forgive me if I am personal.                                       Gentlemen, let`s Forget the past, its related errors, coarseness Of parents, laxities, unrealities of principle. Think of tomorrow. Make a firm postulate Of simplicity in desire and act Founded on the best hypotheses; Desire to eat secretly, alone, lest Ritual corrupt our charity, Lest darkness fall and time fall In a long night when learned arteries Mounting the ice and sum of barbarous time Shall yield, without essence, perfect accident. We are the eyelids of defeated caves.
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