Voltaire Poems

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The Song of Los

 AFRICA 

I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet: 
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity. 
In heart-formed Africa. 
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd! 
And thus the Song began 

Adam stood in the garden of Eden: 
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat; 
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations 
By...Read more of this...

The Hermit

 AN ATTACK ON BARBERCRAFT

[Dedicated to George Cecil Jones]


At last an end of all I hoped and feared!
Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard.

Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred.
I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard.

To all God's questions never a word he said,
But simply shook his venerable head.

God sent all plagues; he laughed and heeded not,
Till people...Read more of this...

The Return

 All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
and follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn
in August or in winter those of frozen sheaves.
Often he'd leave the Terraplane beside the highway
to enter the...Read more of this...

Sonnet to Lake Leman

 Rousseau -- Voltaire -- our Gibbon -- De Sta?l -- 
Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore, 
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more, 
Their memory thy remembrance would recall: 
To them thy banks were lovely as to all, 
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore 
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the...Read more of this...

Voltaire Johnson

 Why did you bruise me with your rough places
If you did not want me to tell you about them?
And stifle me with your stupidities,
If you did not want me to expose them?
And nail me with the nails of cruelty,
If you did not want me to pluck the nails forth
And fling them in your faces?
And starve me because I refused...Read more of this...

Mock On Mock On Voltaire Rousseau

 Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where...Read more of this...

Voltaire at Ferney

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...