The Flaming Terrapin
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| (Found here) |
And gone down dingy thoroughfares to brood
On evils like my own from day to day:
“Life is a dusty corridor,” I say,
“Shut at both ends.” But far across the plain,
Old Ocean growls and tosses his grey mane,
Pawing the rocks in all his old unrest
Or lifting lazily on some white crest
His pale foam-feathers for the moon to burn –
Then to my veins I feel new sap return,
Strength tightens up my sinews long grown dull,
And in the old charred crater of the skull
Light strikes the slow somnambulistic mind
And sweeps her forth to ride the rushing wind,
And stamping on the hill-tops high in air,
To shake the golden bonfire of her hair.
This sudden strength that catches up men’s souls
And rears them up like giants in the sky,
Giving them fins where the dark ocean rolls,
And wings of eagles when the whirlwinds fly,
Stand visible to me in its true self
(No spiritual essence or wing’d elf
Like Ariel on the empty winds to spin).
I see him as a mighty Terrapin,
Rafting whole islands on his stormy back,
Built of strong metals molten from the black
Roots of the inmost earth....
The Ark is launched; cupped by the streaming breeze,
The stiff sails tug the long reluctant keel,
And Noah, spattered by the rising seas,
Stands with his great fist fastened to the wheel.
Like driven clouds, the waves went rustling by,
Feathered and fanned across their liquid sky,
And, like those waves, the clouds in silver bars
Creamed on the scattered shingle of the stars.
All night he watched black water coil and burn,
And the white wake of phosphorus astern
Lit up the sails and made the lanterns dim,
Until it seemed the whole sea burned for him...
The Flaming Terrapin, his labours done,
Humped like a cloud o’er mountain, crag and field
Rose on the skyline. The far-shooting sun
Splintered its arrows on his fiery shield,
From whose bright dome in sudden ricochets
Recoiling flashed the long reflected rays:
While, rolling his red eyes, a double moon
That lit the hillsides with a second noon,
He sank to rest. His golden ridges, tiered
Above the foam, now slowly disappeared:
And as clouds roll immense and globed and still
To burst in thunder round a lonely hill,
The slow foam gathered round him: o’er his wild
Mountainous outline, ponderously piled,
It hung one moment, poised in grim suspense,
And then swamped crashing down, and from its dense
Vortex of thunder, with a gradual sweep
Rolled forth in groaning circles on the deep....
Though the dark sky has gathered stormy numbers
Of vultures to be snowed upon my corpse;
Though the weak arc of Heaven warps
Beneath the darkness that encumbers
The night beyond; though we believe the end
Is but the end, and that the torn flesh crumbles
And the fierce soul, rent from its temple, tumbles
Into the gloom where empty winds contend,
In gnat-like vortex droning – what is this
That makes us stamp upon the mountain-tops,
So fearless at the brink of the abyss,
Where into space the sharp rock-rampart drops
And bleak winds hiss?
It is the silent chanting of the soul:
“Though times shall change and stormy ages roll,
I am that ancient hunter of the plains
That raked the shaggy flitches of the Bison:
Pass world: I am the dreamer that remains,
The Man, clear-cut against the last horizon!”
~Roy Campbell
Analysis (from AllPoetry.com): “This poem explores the transformative power of nature in rekindling the spirit. The speaker experiences a loss of inspiration but finds solace in the boundless energy of the ‘Flaming Terrapin’ (ocean). This metaphor symbolizes the strength and resilience that can overcome despair.”
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