The caves do roar, the very seas do burn,
Glory grows dark, the sun becomes a night,
And makes this great world feel a greater might.
When love doth change his seat from heart to heart,
And worth about the wheel of fortune goes,
Grace is diseas'd, desert seems overthwart,
Vows are forlorn, and truth does credit lose,
Chance then gives law, desire must be wise,
And look more ways than one, or lose her eyes.
My age of joy is past, of woes begun,
Absence my presence is, strangeness my grace;
With them that walk against me, is my sun;
The wheel is turn'd; I hold the lowest place,
What can be good to me since my love is,
To do me harm, content to do amiss?
This dwindling to the personal is a form of confession. In these poems, language is not merely ornament or persuasion, but a vehicle -- or in Gilbert's terms, a titanic vehicle, shearing and forging deep in us. •
("Measuring the Tyger" appears in Jack Gilbert's "The Great Fires: Poems: 1982-2002." Knopf. Copyright © 1996 by Jack Gilbert.)
