Cecil Day Lewis (1904 – 1972)
Irish poet, the British Poet Laureate between 1968 to 1972, and, under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake, a mystery writer.
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Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons
Do not expect again the phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.
Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say
Ask my song.
Who will say farewell?
The beating bell.
Will anyone miss me?
That I dare not tell —
Quick, Rose, and kiss me.
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul?
Is it fine your way
They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom's cause.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And Jove is proved in the letting go.
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