Blogs

This Insubstantial Pageant

By Harley White posted 09-12-2021 06:37

  


Image Credit: ESA/NASA



This Insubstantial Pageant
 
 
Upon our stage we romp and rage
in Goldilocks’s golden cage
amongst colossal cosmic crowd
with spark of liveliness endowed
of pomp and circumstantial fate,
whose worth we underestimate,
 
in constant discontentment caught
‘and sicklied o’er in cast of thought
so enterprises turn awry’,
with not an inkling as to why.
Oh actors in this earthly scene,
what do your frantic antics mean?
 
‘The heartaches and the thousand shocks
that flesh is heir to’ come in flocks,
while nature tenders wherewithal
if we but list her earnest call
in lieu of inner outer din
that sends the senses in a spin.
 
Our little lives today may throng
‘this insubstantial pageant’ long
(to borrow varied Shakespeare tropes),
where humans share despair and hopes
on greater globe of bonny blue—
oh rarest planetary hue!
 
And yet when all ‘our revels end’
this world will leave a stardust blend
behind, ‘to still a beating mind’
of poet bards midst humankind,
a ‘rack’, or wisp of cloud, as told
in Prospero’s discourse of old;
 
for sun shall take its final breaths,
as dramatized in stellar deaths,
to be a nebula newborn
celestial heavens to adorn
in evermore creation’s dawn—
yea ‘such stuff as dreams are made on’…
 
 
~ Harley White
 
 
* * * * * * * * *
 
Some sources of inspiration were the following…
 
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ~ From ‘The Tempest’, Act 4 Scene 1…
https://www.bardweb.net/content/readings/tempest/lines.html
 
William Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’, Act 3, Scene 1…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be,_or_not_to_be
 
Image ~ Starry, Starry Night ~ NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/starry-starry-night
 
Image explanation ~ The Hubble Space Telescope captured a crowd of stars known as Messier 107, which is one of more than 150 globular star clusters found around the disc of the Milky Way galaxy. Messier 107 can be found in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer) and is located about 20,000 light-years from our solar system.
 
Image Credit: ESA/NASA
 
 
#poetry
1 comment
26 views

Permalink

Comments

09-13-2021 11:17

I wonder what Shakespeare  would think of the world situation today? Harley, congratulations on another brilliant poem!!!