Permanence
Permanence
Original Text
The Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1926): 265. PS 8487 C6 A17 1926 Robarts Library.
1Set within a desert lone,
2 Circled by an arid sea,
3Stands a figure carved in stone,
4 Where a fountain used to be.
5Two abraded, pleading hands
6 Held below a shapeless mouth,
7Human-like the fragment stands,
8 Tortured by perpetual drouth.
9Once the form was drenched with spray,
10 Deluged with the rainbow flushes;
11Surplus water dashed away
12 To the lotus and the rushes.
13Time was clothed in rippling fashion,.
14 Opulence of light and air,
15Beauty changing into passion
16 Every hour and everywhere.
17And the yearning of that race
18 Was for something deep and tender,
19Life replete with power, with grace,
20 Touched with vision and with splendour.
21Now no rain dissolves and cools,
22 Dew is even as a dream,
23The enticing far-off pools
24 In a mirage only seem.
25All the traces that remain,
26 Of the longings of that land,
27Are two hands that plead in vain
28 Filled with burning sand.
Publication Start Year
1926
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme