Despotisms
Despotisms
1 I: THE MOTOR: 1905
2From hedgerows where aromas fain would be
3 New volleyed odours execrably arise;
4 The flocks, with hell-smoke in their patient eyes,
5Into the ditch from bawling ruin flee:
6Spindrift of one abominated sea
7 Along all roads in wrecking fury flies
8 Till on young strangled leaf, on bloom that dies,
9In this far plot it writes a rune for me.
10Vast intimate tyranny! Nature dispossessed
11 Helplessly hates thee, whose symbolic flare
12Lights up (with what reiterance unblest!)
13 Entrails of horror in a world thought fair.
14False God of pastime thou, vampire of rest,
15 Augur of what pollution, what despair?
Publication Notes
Guiney, Louise Imogen, Happy Endings: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1927): 182.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
Form