[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
The Guests
Life, life, life everywhere: so much appals —
The spawning sod, the fecund ocean slime,
The monster, and the atom, the sublime
And dreadful children that the Great Voice calls
Within the House of Life’s monastic walls
From the wide nothingness, to sup with Time,
And as the myriad-mannered death befalls,
New births rush onward to the lusty prime.
Matter appals not, it is life that awes,
That makes of Man — chief dweller in the House —
A wistful seeker after hidden laws,
A pulsing prayer, a Gorgon in carouse, —
All things — the while in his unfathomed eye
Gleams ’mid his life his immortality.
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 45
Editor’s notes:
appal = (a variant spelling of “appall”) to be filled with dismay, horror; or shock
fecund = fruitful; producing or able to produce many offspring (can also refer to producing an abundance of fruit, vegetation, etc., such as regarding farmland; as well as to people who are very creative or productive culturally or intellectually)
myriad = an immense number of people, things, or elements (an extremely great, huge, or large number; countless, an innumerable multitude); ten thousand (from the Greek “myrias”, meaning “ten thousand”)
sup = to eat or drink; imbibe drink or food by drinking or eating in small amounts (small mouthfuls, sips, or spoonfuls), especially liquid foods (such as soup); drink; have supper, eat an evening meal
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