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Title: A Taper Of Incense
Author: William Rose Benet [
More Titles by Benet]
You are a bannered balcony
Of God's heraldic house,
Waving above the dinning throng of the days
Pennants of purple and oriflammes of crimson
And cloths of gold.
Your varying device is on every shining shield
Of the brilliant row that flames beneath the eaves
Of that house whose street is cobbled with silver clouds.
The days go down that street, the troops of days
Dark and bright, tramping to tread the earth.
Ever, with trumpets and tumult, rigor or laughter,
They pass saluting, to press upon the world,
Regiment after regiment unnumbered.
Your beauty is a balcony hung with banners
To wave them on. The foremost have sent your name
Echoing rearward to hearten new battalions.
Your beauty is the sunset's streaming flag,
It is the vivid standard of the dawn
Flapping over dazed dream-voyagers
That kneel on new sun-pooled, mysterious strands.
It wasted the moon to pallor, set the sun
Pulsing with burning blood--it shattered the mind
Of heaven into stars.
The beauty of your spirit has sent the winds
Eternally sighing, and sharpened the cold ache
Of the heart-broken, incessantly-sobbing sea.
It has scattered its sparks in the hearts of silken flowers
And has raised the frozen fury of glaciers against the North
And has permeated the South with its elusive fragrance.
Auroral over East and West it dances.
You are a crystal goblet of such wine
Set in a niche of night
That when Death quaffs you he must glow to life
Flushed with eternity.
O proud Love, so humble and human,
Yet beyond the gods to exalt--
O quiet Love, couching with the curled might and majesty
Of tawny leopards!
O tamed tiger, Love, whose golden eyes
Weep for the thrift of angels!
Thou pinnacled pain of the midnight,
Rose-strewer of daylit mire,
Transfiguration of our futile lives,
Dazzler into the secret courts of heaven--
Thou whose passion is written in all men's blood and tears
And in silver letters upon the books of God--
Make me to stand erect, and walk with danger,
And strive like a flame!
For Thou and I are struck as cymbals of God's exultation
In Life, His song!
[The end]
William Rose Benet's poem: Taper Of Incense
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