Donald Davie
Portesilaus and Laodamia
The streaming simile, the plume,
The legend and the flying hair
All indifferently assume
Life in Homer's heavy air.
His heroes wish it. They applaud
When from the shades they hear him sing
The only conquest they implored,
The heavy status of a thing.
Upon the bosom of his love
The dedicated bosom heaves,
Aspiring to the denseness of
His sword, his corslet, casque, and greaves.
He sees, before the assembled power
(His flange between her dreaming thighs)
His time come round, his timeless hour
Solid in all their armour, rise.
The beaks of Greece that mob the town
Lie idling in a bay of time;
Who'll turn the hour-glass upside-down
Now that the sands no longer climb?
They only seem to cut the sea,
All stems but one, where stands the one,
Once slave of fate, of destiny
Now the self-appointed son.
The tragic hero jumps to death
Kissing the day that gives at once,
Free of the accident of breath,
A life in legendary bronze.
But Laodamia, his love,
Is only less substantial, wed
To no true man, and dreaming of
A metal beak, no human head.
Page(s) 13-14
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