The Poetry Corner

The Song Of The Dynamo.

By Charles Hamilton Musgrove

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood-- With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die, For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood, And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good"; I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy. Men hear me sing but they know not the source of my song; I hold them enthralled with my mysterious eyes; They quiver when I purr with the voice of a wanton woman; They touch me and fall dead. I am a dream of the Creator made visible; My voice is an echo of the Voice that taught The morning stars their choral hymn; The force that binds me to the marts of men Is the force that holds the planets in a leash while God Drives them in glittering galaxy around the sun. Here I am a weakling's symbol of a power That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands, And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light. My soul is destiny and immortality; It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea, And the sea smiles; My soul is the wingless word That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of the void. In the years that are to be I shall soar like an evil bird over the warring camps of men, And spew destroying poison. I shall be the sinew of a strange wing,-- A wing that shall bear men into the forge of the thunder and the lightning. But when I fail the groundlings shall look up And see their brothers through the ether plunge, Stricken, a haggard rout of flame-flotillas of the sun! In the years that are to come I shall be a servant in the house of men; I shall breathe unutterable music on the spindle and the loom; I shall sing, exultant, with the choristers of dreams fulfilled, And light shall be bound like sandals on my feet. I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood-- With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die, For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood, And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good"; I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.