The Song Of The Dynamo.

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
    With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
    I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.

Men hear me sing but they know not the source of my song;
I hold them enthralled with my mysterious eyes;
They quiver when I purr with the voice of a wanton woman;
They touch me and fall dead.
I am a dream of the Creator made visible;
My voice is an echo of the Voice that taught
The morning stars their choral hymn;
The force that binds me to the marts of men
Is the force that holds the planets in a leash while God
Drives them in glittering galaxy around the sun.

Here I am a weakling's symbol of a power
That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands,
And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light.
My soul is destiny and immortality;
It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along
The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty
Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea,
And the sea smiles;
My soul is the wingless word
That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of the void.

In the years that are to be
I shall soar like an evil bird over the warring camps of men,
And spew destroying poison.
I shall be the sinew of a strange wing,--
A wing that shall bear men into the forge of the thunder and the lightning.
But when I fail the groundlings shall look up
And see their brothers through the ether plunge,
Stricken, a haggard rout of flame-flotillas of the sun!

In the years that are to come
I shall be a servant in the house of men;
I shall breathe unutterable music on the spindle and the loom;
I shall sing, exultant, with the choristers of dreams fulfilled,
And light shall be bound like sandals on my feet.

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
    With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
    I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

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Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Hymn Of The Tomb Builders.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The Dead Child.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The Red Cross.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The First Born.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Tornado.

God let me fall from His hand
One day at His forge when the elemental world
Was shaping. I am but a breath from His great bellows,
But here among the workshops of mankind
I am a fateful scourge.

I tear red strips from the proud cities of men;
I name my passage the Highway of Instant Death;
I splinter world-old forests with my laugh,
And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes.
I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars,
And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips
As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew,
The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward,
Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor,
And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining decks
Till comes my moo...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Voices.

Earthquake.

I am a memory of cosmogony,
That first great hour of travail when the voice
Of God called suns and systems from the void;
I am the dream He dreams of that last day
When mountains by the roots shall be plucked up
And headlong flung into the raging sea!


Hurricane.

I am the breath that fills the organ pipes
When through the vast cathedral of the world
Death's stormy threnody sweeps, wave on wave,
The symboled note that one day will be blown
By a great angel standing in the sun,
At which the heaven and earth shall pass away!


Fire.

I am the letters of that fateful word
Writ with a flaming sword above the gates
Of Eden when God spelled the doom of man;
I am the wrath that on the jud...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

A Woman, And Some Men.

Once in a dream of Babylon
    I sat with Lilith and Cain
At the world-old drama, "From God to God,"
    In the House of Things Profane;
Trumpets and lights, and the players
    Swung to the stage, and then
I saw as I looked in their faces
    A woman, and some men.

Men with the eyes of the psalmist,
    Men with the hearts of Saul,
Strong with the wine of valor,
    But faint with the woman's thrall;
Calm were her eyes as she held them
    Charmed to her soulless sway,
For she had the face of the Magdalene,
    And the heart of Aholiba.

Wine and kisses and gusty words,
    Kisses and wine again,
And her lips and brow were red with stains
    From the hairy mouths of men,
Red as the stain on the brow of Cain
    That burned...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Love And Art.

I.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art
        Singing where the future lies
        Wrapped in hues of Paradise,
        Pleading with her poignant note
        That forever seems to float
Farther down the vista that is calling to thy heart.
        Hearken! From the heights
        Where thy soul alights
Bend thine ear to listen for the lute of Love is sighing:
        "Eagle-heart, child-heart,
        Love is love, and art is art;
        Answer while thy lips are red;
        Wilt thou have a barren bed?
        Choose between us which to wed:
Answer, for thy bride awaits, and fragile hours are flying!"


II.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far aw...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Quatrains.

The Sky Line.

Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
    The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
    I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.


Defeat.

He sits and looks into the west
    Where twilight gathers, wan and gray,
A knight who quit the Golden Quest,
    And flung Excalibur away.


To an Amazon.

O! twain in spirit, we shall know
    Thy like no more, so fierce, so mild,
One breast shorn clean to rest the bow,
    One milk-full for thy warrior child.


The Old Mother.

Life is like an old mother whom trouble and toil
Have sufficed the best part of her nature to spoil,
Whom her children, the Passions, so ...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Jetsam

        I wonder can this be the world it was
        At sunset? I remember the sky fell
        Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends,
        But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs
        As if to shut the city from God's eyes
        Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights.
        Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed,
        Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard
        To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense;
        Or if a young face yearned from out the mist
        Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan
        With desolate fore-knowledge of the end.
        My life lay waste about me: as I walked,
        From the gross dark of unfrequented streets
        The face of my own youth peered forth at me,

William Vaughn Moody