Poetry Performed Episode 004 - Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop

Episode 004 - Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop
Movies and popular culture and long standing myth and legend equate the fall with mysterious movings of the universe. Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop calls for that power of fall, and seems particularly appropriate as Halloween approaches.

Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop

When the leaves, by thousands thinned,
A thousand times have whirled in the wind,
And the moon, with hollow cheek,
Staring from her hollow height,
Consolation seems to seek
From the dim, reechoing night;
And the fog-streaks dead and white
Lie like ghosts of lost delight
O’er highest earth and lowest sky;
Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!

Strew the ground with poppy-seeds,
And let my bed be hung with weeds,
Growing gaunt and rank and tall,
Drooping o’er me like a pall.
Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist
Across my brow to turn and twist
Fold on fold, and leave me blind
To all save visions in the mind.
Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams
I shall slumber, and in dreams
Slide through some long glen that burns
With a crust of blood-red ferns
And brown-withered wings of brake
Like a burning lava-lake;—
So, urged to fearful, faster flow
By the awful gasp, “Hahk! hahk!” of the crow,
Shall pass by many a haunted rood
Of the nutty, odorous wood;
Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom,
Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom;
Till, lured by light, reflected cloud,
I burst aloft my watery shroud,
And upward through the ether sail
Far above the shrill wind’s wail;—
But, falling thence, my soul involve
With the dust dead flowers dissolve;
And, gliding out at last to sea,
Lulled to a long tranquillity,
The perfect poise of seasons keep
With the tides that rest at neap.
So must be fulfilled the rite
That giveth me the dead year’s might;
And at dawn I shall arise
A spirit, though with human eyes,
A human form and human face;
And where’er I go or stay,
There the summer’s perished grace
Shall be with me, night and day.

That was Incantation by George Parsons Lathrop. George Parsons Lathrop was born in Hawaii in 1851. He died in New York City in 1898.

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