Edgar Lee Masters (Эдгар Ли Мастерс)
Webster Ford
Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew Cried, ”There’s a ghost,” and I, ”It’s Delphic Apollo”; And the son of the banker derided us, saying, ”It’s light By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.” And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart, Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! ’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, If die you must in the spring. For none shall look On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must ’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers -- Delphic Apollo.
Edgar Lee Masters’s other poems:
885
