Restless Will

O, solemn harmony of lonesome waves Whose power tolls the bell of dreams! Your passioned voice of rising freedom braves All force whose will unfolds resentful streams! The longing for past lives—though fading—may, Below the burning sky, adopt a rhyme Which wilts unseen by light or life, whose way To weave the calm of night may challenge time. Concealed by shades of mingled coatings worn And shed away by hope’s inheritor, The epitaph of peace is sadly born To be death’s first and last progenitor. Once-undefeated powers have declined To naught since dormant seas of madness swelled To drown the child of time, who wrote and signed The edict bound to rouse all hate unquelled. The pageantry of amity and praise Forever haunts the idle brain, whose guess At cryptic answers forms the endless maze Which human reason struggles to possess. A wordless anthem favored by the gods Is chanted round the ocean’s living frame While Jove is hurling off his lightning rods, Whose architects bear neither form nor name. The cold, dark bosom of the gloomy tomb Where gold is stolen from the lifeless crowd Is stained with blood by creeping ghosts, whose doom Is all but certain, clarioned aloud. The shimmer borne by rapturous delight When gentle verses nourish, ever still, The spirits of indomitable might Sings, loud and clear, the Graces’ restless will. Below the clouds, uprisen then upturned, The breeze within the forest of the damned Grows faint and mute, its voice forever spurned Beneath the spread of trees, where wraiths are banned. The ruthless wolves, whose rage was freed To crawl for freedom, now are old and tame Like man’s deep yearning to transcend time’s lead. In such a world, what demons shall I blame? Find my poems and published poetry volumes at www.eton-langford.com