Two Miltonic Sonnets

Stephen Hoffman
Poetry in Form

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My idle prospects are an open wold
Where, in the sun, the dews of morning burn
Naked and pale, in fields of ripe lucerne,
Fragrant lucerne, azure and smoking gold.
Incense more pleasing if the truth be told
To the gods’ nostrils than the soot’s return
As acid rain — tribute the heavens spurn
As sickly — to this miserable sheepfold.
Industrious youth! The high gods laugh to scorn
Earnest libations to the hopeful morn
Poured out in offering. Your soft flesh, O youth,
Unclasping to the noontide’s amorous tooth
Its shroud of mortal snow will stain the sky
With gold and turquoise filaments, burn and die.

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Though my intended task is still undone,
My stone-pale blood reduced and untoward,
My backward youth could wish its maiden sword
Was fleshed with deeds and sated with the sun.
To wrest by force of art from the bastion
Of hidden language the bright-colored hoard
Of precious words, by dragon-avarice stored
Against all strength — acclaim expertly won,
The high reward for which ambition thirsts,
In one proud heartbeat meeting strength with strength —
Is strength and valor scorned and wasted breath,
Until time like a ruptured artery bursts
And saturates the sky throughout its length
With poetry, hypoxia and death.

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