Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, E in  General   

Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or
seeming angel or demon from above or from below
Or made more than it is knows itself to be by the authority
of any ministry of love.

O no -- it is the choice of chances and the chancing of
all choice -- the wine
which was the water may be sickening, unsatisfying or
sour
A new barbiturate drawn from the fattest flower
That prospers green on Lethe's shore. For every hour
Denies or once again affirms the vow and the ultimate
tower
Of aspiration which made Ulysses toil so far away from
home
And then, for years, strive against every wanton desire,
sea and fire, to return across the.
ever-threatening seas
A journey forever far beyond all the vivid eloquence
of every poet and all poetry.

By Delmore Schwartz

Tell Your Friends About It | Print This Poem

Comments

You should be logged in to be able to leave comments

Other poems by Delmore Schwartz:

• A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Mad
• A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
• Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
• America, America!
• Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Mus
• Archaic Bust Of Apollo
• At This Moment Of Time
• By Circumstances Fed
• Cambridge, Spring 1937
• Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception
• Far Rockaway
• Faust In Old Age
• For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Han
• From The Graveyard By The Sea
• From: A King Of Kings, A King Among The Kings
• In The Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives The Heart
• Late Autumn In Venice
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• News Of The Gold World Of May
• O Love, Sweet Animal
• Occasional Poems
• Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look
• Parlez-Vous Francais?
• Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontolo
• Phoenix Lyrics
• Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness)
• Poem (In the morning, when it was raining)
• Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow)
• Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)
• Poem (You, my photographer, you, most aware)
• Prothalamion
• Saint, Revolutionist
• Socrates Ghost Must Haunt Me Now
• Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before
• Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experien
• Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, E
• Sonnet: O City, City
• Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard
• Spiders
• The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
• The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
• The Beautiful American Word, Sure
• The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain
• The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Vari
• The Poet
• The Sin Of Hamlet
• The Spring
• Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
• To Helen
• What Curious Dresses All Men Wear
• What Is To Be Given
• Yeats Died Saturday In France

Users Online