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Prokosch, Dr Frederic - Chosen Poems – The Assassins
Identifier
029053
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Assassins
O SUMMON out of memory
Into understanding
So that all may fear it
From the blood and fever
Of our passionate and forever
Unregenerate spirit
Such spectacles
As men remember
Of the beautiful, musical
Of flesh, long, limber:
And deduce: how
In the consummate brow
Such cruelties dwell
As into eternity
Flushed the subservient blood,
Flattened our silver cities
And covered them with wood.
Consider, O lover,
The vistas you will find
Exploring through the years
Past precipice and river
The wilderness of the mind.
Quail! at the image
Of terrestrial beauty
More exalted than the eagle,
Than the lion more regal,
And contemplate
The planetary distress
That allows to move
Beneath such loveliness
Such hostility to love,
Such horror and hate;
O love
Remember Alexander,
Alcibiades,
Achilles: more slender
Than the slenderest of these,
Yet haughtier, still more haunting
Of voice, feature and form,
Vigilant and proud
As filled the memories
Of her who wildly stood
And discerned the centuries
Of warm ocean flood
So indifferently pouring
Past her constant and solitary
Egyptian shore:
And be reminded, in the hours
Of tenderness before sleep
By each beautiful stranger
Whether of word or flesh
How heaven has sheathed
By such creations our powers
In incalculably deep
And everlasting danger.