Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

Volume Introduction by Harold BloomxviiAll along the road the reddishpurplish, forked, upstanding, twiggystuff of bushes and small treeswith dead, brown leaves under themleafless vines—Lifeless in appearance, sluggishdazed spring approaches—They enter the new world naked,cold, uncertain of allsave that they enter. All about themthe cold, familiar wind—The bell-rope that gathers God at dawnDispatches me as though I had dropped down the knellOf a spent day—to wander the cathedral lawnFrom pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.Have you not heard, have you not seen that corpsOf shadows in the tower, whose shoulders swayAntiphonal carillons launched beforeThe stars are caught and hived in the sun’s ray?The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;And swing I know not where. Their tongues engraveMembrane through my marrow, my long-scattered scoreOf broken intervals . . . And I, their sexton slave!Oval encyclicals in canyons heapingThe impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles outleaping—O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!And so it was I entered the broken worldTo trace the visionary company of love, its voice