Of Bronze and Blaze
poem 290
Of Bronze and Blaze - meaning Summary
Majesty Against Human Triviality
The speaker responds to a vast, composed northern presence whose sovereign indifference produces feelings of grandeur and arrogance. This swelling pride leads the speaker to disdain humanity and even ordinary needs like oxygen. Yet the poem ends by reversing that pride: the speaker imagines their own fate as forgotten and reduced to an island known only to beetles, while human spectacle continues briefly for centuries. The tone balances hauteur with mortality.
Read Complete AnalysesOf Bronze and Blaze The North Tonight So adequate it forms So preconcerted with itself So distant to alarms And Unconcern so sovereign To Universe, or me Infects my simple spirit With Taints of Majesty Till I take vaster attitudes And strut upon my stem Disdaining Men, and Oxygen, For Arrogance of them My Splendors, are Menagerie But their Completeless Show Will entertain the Centuries When I, am long ago, An Island in dishonored Grass Whom none but Beetles know.
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