Poetry for the Eclipse

The impending eclipse reminded NeoNeocon of  a poem by Archibald Macleish:

And here face down beneath the sun  
And here upon earth’s noonward height  
To feel the always coming on 
The always rising of the night: 

 

To feel creep up the curving east  
The earthy chill of dusk and slow  
Upon those under lands the vast  
And ever climbing shadow grow 

 

And strange at Ecbatan the trees  
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange  
The flooding dark about their knees  
The mountains over Persia change 

 

And now at Kermanshah the gate  
Dark empty and the withered grass  
And through the twilight now the late  
Few travelers in the westward pass 

 

And Baghdad darken and the bridge  
Across the silent river gone 
And through Arabia the edge 
Of evening widen and steal on

 

RTWT.  The poem reminded me of another poem, George Meredith’s Lucifer in Starlight:

 

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.