From: hoahosth@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (ANDREA HOSTH)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: A D Hope
Summary: and Greek mythology.
Keywords: Very meaning rich with ref to Christianity, feminism
Date: 22 Aug 92 13:47:51 GMT
Organization: Halls of Residence, Monash University

Just some Hope poems that I particularly like:

	PARADISE SAVED
 (another version of the Fall)

Adam, indignant, would not eat with Eve,
They say, and she was driven from his side.
Watching the gates close on her tears, his pride
Upheld him, though he could not help but grieve

And climbed the wall, because his loneliness
Pined for her lonely figure in the dust:
Lo, there were two! God who is more than just
Sent her a helpmeet in that wilderness.

Day after day he watched them in the waste
Grow old, breaking the harsh unfriendly ground,
Bearing their children, till at last they died,
While Adam, whose fellow God had not replaced,
Live on immortal, young, with virtue crowned,
Sterile and impotent and justified.


	THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE
(This is one of my absolute favourite poems, and the only one that has 
inspired me to art... The last two paragraphs are among the most 
powerful words I have ever read.)

Gliding through the still air, he made no sound;
Wing-shod and deft, dropped almost at her feet,
And searched the ghostly regiments and found
The living eyes, the tremor of breath, the beat
Of blood in all that bodiless underground.

She left her majesty; she loosed the zone
Of darkness and put by the rod of dread.
Standing, she turned her back upon the throne
Where, well she knew, the Ruler of the Dead,
Lord of her body and being, sat like stone;

Stared with his ravenous eyes to see her shake
The midnight drifting from her loosened hair,
The girl once more in all her actions wake,
The blush of colour in her cheeks appear
Lost with her flowers that day beside the lake.

The summer flowers scattering, the shout,
The black manes plunging down to the black pit -
Memory or dream? She stood a while in doubt,
Then touched the Traveller God's brown arm and met
His cool, bright glance and heard his words ring out:

"Queen of the Dead and Mistress of the Year!"
 - His voice was the ripe ripple of the corn;
The touch of dew, the rush of morning air -
"Remember now the world where you were born;
The month of your return at last is here."

And still she did not speak, but turned again
Looking for answer, for anger, for command:
The eyes of Dis were shut upon their pain;
Calm as his marble brow, the marble hand
Slept on his knee. Insuperable disdain.

Foreknowing all bounds of passion, of power, of art;
Mastered but could not mask his deep despair.
Even as she turned with Hermes to depart,
Looking her last on her grim ravisher
For the first time she loved him from her heart.


	THE MUSE

She is Arachne. Instinct spins the net
Of her ferocious purpose in the night.
On her bared nerves the dew shakes bright and wet;
The angry goddess still with light
Tortures the web; for there the spider hangs
In loveliness no wisdom could invent
And conscious of the poison in her fangs.

She is Ariadne by the shore
Watching a black sail vanish on the sea,
While he, whose steps beyond the dreadful door
Were guided, and again set free,
The loutish prince forgets the path he trod;
And she; though she remembers, will consent
Soon to be tumbled by the drunken god.

She is Penelope. Nightlong at the loom
She must unravel the promise in her heart,
Subdue the monthly protest of the womb;
And still she knows, for all her art,
While its one poor design grows out of date,
The gods, who have all time, too late relent
And when her triumph comes, it comes too late.


Enjoy!

Ankh