Avalanche

At whiles the loud avalanche the pebble feigns,
And sole the cause that biddeth thee yet fare
Is to fulfil the parle thou once ordain’d
With thine own self in pacing the bare air

With the selfsame lucence thou didst ever crave,
And with the selfsame chidings all too late
Which ne’er in mould of utterance thou gave
Till the last unseal’d flagon of the date.

Here do I warp the syntax in strange guise
By ev’ry sundry sleight my lore can frame,
Striving to keep the sense within me by,
Or mayhap striving to obscure the same

Behind the wonted rhyme and chiming,
That now no more hold poesy’s due grace
But serve as exorcism and as priming,
A physic’d purge I must still embrace

For in the murked noons, at last, I found
A feeble taper-light, whereby was shown
A secret nook in ruin’d depth unsound,
That bare my visage, wasted yet mine own.

Yea, certes, a wan visage and all fordone,
A series fraught with discourses astray,
A gaunt body, and pallid, and flesh and bone,
And a proud-seeming presence to gainsay,

Yet still a visage, and enow it was
At least to raise again the scanty beam
That keeps upright the hut in batter’d cause,
Kickt, spit upon by far too lengthy dream.

The eras end of me, and many wend anew,
Not pleas’d with the long course we went beside;
I greet them, wrangle, part in scant ado,
Awaiting next epiphanies to bide.

How may one be a man and hero stay
When such a breadth doth gape, marge to marge?
How may one dwell with non-mortal age
If e’en a day doth seem too fell a charge?