Two Poems of Darkness

JUEVES, 13 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2012

Two Poems of Darkness

 

I

 

 

A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day, 

Being the Shortest Day

John Donne

 

'Tis the year's midnight and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

    The sun is spent, and now his flasks

    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays.

        The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th'hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

 

Study me, then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

    For I am every dead thing

    In whom love wrought new alchemy.

         For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations and lean emptiness.

He ruined me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

 

All others from all things draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

    I, by love's limbeck, am the grave

    Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

        Have we two wept, and so

Drowned the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

 

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

    Were I a man, that I were one

    I needs must know; I should prefer,

        If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest 

And love. All, all some properties invest.

If I an ordinary nothing were, 

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

 

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

    At this time to the Goat is run

    To fetch new lust and give it you

        Enjoy your summer all.

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil and her eve, since this

Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

 

 

 

 

 

                  

II

 

Darkness

 

 

Lord Byron

 

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye

Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:

A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;

Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour

They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks

Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd

And twin'd themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again: a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails—men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,

Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,

Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead

Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,

And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

 

 

 

—oOo—

 

 

The Road, and Company