Poem by Thomas MacDonagh

Of the Man of My First Play

As one who stands in awe when on his sight
A fragment of antiquity doth burst
And body huge above the plain which erst
Knew its high fame and all its olden might,
So in a dream of vanquished power and right
I gazed on him, a fragment from the first,
A ruin vast, half builded here and curst,--
Perhaps full moulded in the eternal night.

How may I show him? -- How his story plan
Who was prefigured to the dreaming eye
In term of other being? -- May he fill
This mask of life? -- Or will my creature cry
Shame that I dwarf the sequel and the man
To house him thus within a fragment still?

1. The Song of Joy
2. In Dread
3. The Poet Saint
4. The Seasons and the Leaves
5. A Dream of Being

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