{"id":5919,"date":"2025-04-05T14:43:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T14:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5919"},"modified":"2025-05-17T06:22:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T06:22:33","slug":"romantic-poets-in-the-wild-10-clay-franklin-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5919","title":{"rendered":"Romantic Poets in the Wild #10: Clay Franklin Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Clay F. Johnson, poet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A Ride through Faerie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Clay Franklin Johnson is the author of A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems<\/em> (Gothic Keats Press, 2021). His collection\u2019s eponymous poem was presented at \u201cIll met by moonlight\u201d: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realms in literature and culture<\/em>, a conference organized by the Open Graves, Open Minds Project (OGOM) with the University of Hertfordshire. In December 2024, Clay\u2019s poem \u201cThe Faery Wood\u201d won the Highly Commended Award, one of two prizes given for the Brian Nisbet Poetry Award in Huntly, Scotland. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Elgin Award, received Honorable Mention in The Best Horror of the Year<\/em>, and has appeared in publications such as Nightingale & Sparrow<\/em>, The Fairy Tale Magazine,<\/em> Abyss & Apex<\/em>, and Gramarye<\/em>, among others. Clay has writing forthcoming in Fairies: A Companion from Peter Lang<\/em>, Oxford in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clay’s contribution includes five poems (with background) and I will include links to some longer poems below the verse. We at BARS hope you enjoy these Keatsian explorations of memory, location, loss, and much else beside. And a brief reminder that we are still open for further poetical\/artistic contributions to our series, which I hope will continue throughout the year!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cKeats Stone\u201d \u2014 Brief background behind the poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKeats Stone\u201d was written on the bicentenary of Keats\u2019s death. Besides the refrain (and epigraphs) of violets and daisies throughout, the most important inspiration behind the piece was Fanny Brawne\u2019s sewing stone of polished white carnelian (the \u201clove-charm\u201d) that she gave to Keats before he left for Italy, as well as her letters that he just could not bear to read \u2014 letters which were \u201ctoo worldly\u201d, as Joseph Severn wrote. In honor of Keats, I have also included allusions (some direct quotes, written in italics) to \u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d, Endymion<\/em>, Lamia<\/em>, \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci\u201d, \u201cThis living hand\u201d fragment, and a line from both Keats\u2019s first known letter to Fanny and one of his last that he ever wrote (addressed to his friend Charles Brown, but very much about Fanny).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keats Stone\n\nI shall soon be laid in the quiet grave\u2014thank God for the quiet grave\u2014O! I can feel the cold earth upon me\u2014the daisies growing over me\u2014O for this quiet\u2014it will be my first.\n\nViolets were his favourite flowers, and he joyed to hear how they overspread the graves. He assured me that he seemed already to feel the flowers growing over him.\n\nThe letters I put into the coffin with my own hand.<\/em>\n\nBuried like a burning bright star beneath\nElfin seas of deepest blue violets,\nBreathing deep to drink an Orphean sleep\nOf whispering enchantments nepenthean,\nSibilant and serpentine, listening\nFor liminality in quiet breathing,\nCoiling, creeping between each and every\nMelting shade of Lamian glamoury,\nPouring spell-craft into a melody\nCaptured deep within a white carnelian\u2014\nA love-charm from Endymion\u2019s brilliant queen,\nLove-touched with bewitcheries and love-dreams\nLike love-deaths from nightingale ecstasies,\nSight-reading skies of opal and pearl\nSinging to the stars of another world\n\nBuried like a burning bright star beneath\nUntamed grasses of wild white daisies,\nWinding entwined through elfin seas\nOf deepest blue violets, breathing deep\nTo drink its Lethean sleep, emerging\nFrom the glamoury of perilous shadow\nAs dreamy ghost-paths glistening like snow,\nSlithering lucid and luminous\nThrough faerie-song of silver voices,\nMelodies from noctilucent clouds\nAs if the moon melted into the echo\nOf its own interlunar music,\nAnd the skies dripped liquid moonlight\nLike tears frozen and spellbound\nBy astral visions of liminal shine\n\nBuried like a burning bright star beneath\nElfin seas of deepest blue violets,\nBeneath ghostly paths of wild white daisies\nGlistening like a meadow of snow\nLies in the earth a pale carnelian stone,\nOval-shaped, a fragment of cloud-lightning\nCradled within a hand of bone,\nDry of blood but never once cold,\nChanged by death and decay\nBut untouched by the quiet grave,\nFor deep within that living piece\nOf feverish liminality streams\nRed life born from death of a single star-beam:\nBurning eternal as a buried love-charm\nSinging one song of two broken hearts\n\nBeneath violets and daisies\nRestless atop a poet\u2019s grave,\nRests in the earth the mortal remains\nOf an immortal name, for when inwrapt\nIn the hour of crepuscular embrace\nFate cut his thread of liminality,\nSilver-spun by incorporeal light\nWhen the Queen-Moon wept ecstasies\nUpon Endymion\u2019s eternal sleep,\nHe welcomed the air of quiet death\nBy smiling on his own despair, grasping\nIn his still living hand his brightest star,\nBrighter than bright, fairer than fair<\/em>,\nWhispering with Orphean charm\nSoft words of his dying last breaths\n\nTouch has a memory<\/em>: eternity.\nShall I awake and find all this a dream?<\/em>\nBut when he fell into a sleep\nOf unapparent immortality,\nSlipping beneath the elfin seas\nInstead of into her arms, it was her\nSewing-stone of polished white carnelian\nThat captured the echoing shards\nOf two self-consuming stars,\nTracing each shape of cold mortality\nBetween two ever-beating hearts,\nVoicing their voiceless memories\nUpon visions of spring that never came:\nFor if Life let two hearts divide\nThen may Death let love reunite\n\nWas it a vision, or a waking dream?<\/em>\nFor not even breathing deep to drink\nOf his Lethean sleep could unsee\nAnd forget what can never be unseen,\nThus, placed lastly within his winding-sheet,\nUnopened and unread, were feverish\nLove-letters that he could not bear to read\u2014\nDo I wake or sleep?<\/em> No, there is no music,\nThere is no extinguished spirit beneath,\nFor he has journeyed far beyond the reach\nOf his Orphean liminality,\nWhere her loving last words are too worldly\nFor a heart that once loved with otherworldly scars:\nHis whose name was writ in water\nAnd captured by the stars.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey\u201d \u2014 Brief background behind the poem:<\/strong>

\u201cLines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey\u201d was, like the title suggests, mostly written in situ during a full moon at Whitby Abbey, or \u201cin the wild\u201d, to go with one interpretation of your theme. It leans more toward the Gothic, tinctured heavily with a Draculaean sort of influence (not surprisingly), but it somewhat \u201clightens up\u201d near the end, so to speak. The main influence that I want to highlight here was my beloved dogs, both of whom I lost within a year of one another. As an animal lover who has never got on well with people, their deaths had a profound influence on my life and writing at the time, and for years after.

Without going into too much detail (it\u2019s still difficult to write about), one year after I lost my chocolate lab, Blue, I was living abroad and on a particularly fine day in Nottinghamshire I found myself at Newstead Abbey. This was no accident, for besides my interest in Byron, my foremost desire was to visit Boatswain\u2019s Monument, to honor both my Blue as well as Byron\u2019s own beloved dog. So, first thing in the morning, I walked directly to the monument and paid homage to the memory of my dear Blue, then, after wandering the grounds for some time, returned to pay my respects to Boatswain. However, as I wandered the gardens that afternoon, I received news from back home that my dear basset hound, Anna, had died. Thus, unexpectedly and in a sort of tragic coincidence, I made one final visit to the monument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey<\/strong>\n\n\u201cFull of the dark resolve he took his sullen way.\u201d\n\u2014Thomas Warton\n\nWithin the shadows and madness of Night,\nWhere each whisper floats upon moon-silver\nAnd soft voices breathe upon me like ice,\nI wait impatient for Her haunted eyes,\nFor Her look of poetry without words\nThat speaks to me Keatsian without verse,\nWithout living warmth, touched by the cold hand\nOf Death, sick with suicide-whisperings\nLingering on each disembodied breath,\nListening deeply I hear no sweeter mystery\n\nI thus breathe in each poisonous thought,\nEach sugary strand of silent silver,\nIce-mists of cold enchantment, frosted moon-glow,\nWreathed upon my throat like an amulet\nOf whispering witch-crystal, awakening\nMy eyes to the night-creatures of moonlight:\nThe skeletal-fingered bat, slithering\nThings of opal serpent-scale, eyes of white,\nAnd the silent shadows of the night-wolf,\nDripping living rubies for the blood is the life<\/em>\n\nAnd yet, as I trace each silent shadow,\nEach deathless whisper of cold persuasion,\nFloating on each silver-slithering beam\nShimmering with dreams of waking illusion,\nI am consumed by Her frozen witch-flames,\nConsumed by moonlight, each creature of Night,\nAnd as I absorb Her deathly light, I too\nFeel myself absorbed,\u2014changed<\/em>\u2014metamorphosed\nBy Her all-intoxicating madness,\nBeloved to all that is shadowful and strange\n\nMy eyes at once embrace this change, alive\nYet unalive, living yet death-dreaming,\nMoon-changed until ice-stones become my eyes,\nYorkshire-frosted like ghost quartz, crystalized,\nCapturing the death-sparkle of black moonstone\u2014\nRaven feather black, corpse-black, a black ice\nConsuming my flesh like witches\u2019 frostbite:\nThe creeping Night inspiring death to all life,\nUntil only a beam of cold moonlight\nTracing the traceries of Gothic stone remains alive\n\nAnd yet it does not live, it does not breathe,\nIt has no eyes and thus it does not see\u2014\nBut something exists, something watches me,\nA pale ghost-light, a shadow lingering,\nCapturing the cold night-glow of moonlight,\nThe frosts of midnight, dark ephemeral\nFleeting as Night\u2019s transience immortal:\nYes, It<\/em> is the night eternal, the darkness,\nIt<\/em> is the spirit of night-existence\nWatching without eyes Its<\/em> children of the night\n\nAs It<\/em> watches, I feel Its<\/em> cold gaze,\nI feel Its<\/em> seduction and I again change:\nMy eyes, still silvered, materialize,\nAppear before me like eyes of corpse-light,\nA self-reflection of the demon-self,\nThe face behind the glass, pale and grave-cold,\nCaptured as magic-lantern necromancy,\nSapphire-flames of the plague-dead, the death-fires,\nDancing as phantasmagoria ghost scenes\nBlending two phantasies of one reality\n\nThese ghastly eyes, moon-spun with gossamer\nThread of glowing decay, are my very own,\nAnd yet, not my own, too pale, much too cold\nAs if plucked by the skeletal fingers\nOf Death, ripped and torn out like vile jellies\nOf living sapphire, living emerald,\nTaken from the light and given to Night\u2014\nShe, Her, It<\/em>, the Darkness, the true Night Spirit,\nPossessing my once warm and living eyes\nWithin a single beam of haunted moonlight\n\nThen, from a passing shadow of night-mist,\nGlistening wet like vitreous black opal,\nFleeting by upon a floating ghost-cloud\nCarrying each color of pestilence,\nThere came a change: within the imprisoned\nBeam of moonlight, and around those ghastly,\nStill-watching eyes, there appeared a strange face,\nYet familiar as it took shape in the mists,\nAs if gazing into polished moon-glass\nAnd finding the gaze of my own self-eclipse\n\nThe incessant, never-ending windchill\nOf the North Sea\u2019s ever-deepening cold,\nGathering its breath for eternities,\nWhere even Death exists with frost in its bones,\nWas nothing to the ice I felt when that face\nMaterialized, for I knew it was mine,\nLike those ghastly eyes, ever watching me\u2014\nAnd yet, still anguishing with self-regret,\nI felt a cold peace pierce my still-living heart\nAnd I closed my eyes to this beautiful night-world\n\nI open my eyes and find the night changed<\/em>:\nNo longer do I see those ghastly eyes\nWatching me in that haunted beam of moonlight,\nNor that face,\u2014that face<\/em>\u2014a self-reflection\nOf all the calms and comforts of the grave\u2014\nNo, I see myself now captured within\nA moon-shadow, colder than its beams of light,\nBetween two Gothic arches of intricate\nStone-craft, and beneath the many-petalled rose,\nLying still in the silent darkness, my eyes closed\n\nI have now self-possessed that hideous thing\nImprisoned in that most singular beam,\nBut, as I examine each familiar\nFeature, I realize a beautiful truth:\nMy flesh is not grave-cold, nor touched by decay,\nBut instead glows otherworldly glac\u00e9,\nEthereal silver, a cold eternity\nTouched by Night\u2019s incurable moon-cancer,\nEating away each living impurity\nUntil Death has left its pale immortality\n\nAs I look with new eyes, in macabre\nCuriosity, I realize a new change:\nThe night-creatures exist in a new light,\nLiving in harmony as any life\u2014\nThe bat, no longer skeletal-fingered,\nCaresses the midnight-air with leathered\nSoftness, and the opal-scale slithering\nOf the serpent now glistens amethystine,\nCrescents noctilucent, emerald-rich,\nAnd vivid eyes of azurean argent\n\nThe night-wolf, most beloved of all, dissolves\nInto ghosts of my beloved dogs lost:\nI see my chocolate Blue watching me\nWith his sublime eyes of otherworldly fire,\nJoyous, amber-like, wild as volcanian light\u2014\nI remember these eyes, always and ever,\nFor once they closed, and closed forever,\nHolding him in my arms as he died,\nThey would come to haunt my each and every night,\nBut now they live again, with all joy of living light\n\nAnd my droopy-eared hound, Anna, freckled\nWith patches of cream and soft brown, cow-like,\nWhom I lost while I wandered heart-broken\nAt Boatswain\u2019s tomb in honor of my Blue,\nMissing my last chance at one last good-bye,\nNow greets me again with her same languid\nYet ever-loveable curiosity\u2014\nAnd thus Night reveals another secret:\nThe silent shadows, ever watching me,\nHave been my faithful friends, ever waiting for me\n\nWithin the shadows of Night, I exist\nOnly as a haunted beam of moonlight,\nFor the shadows are no longer silent,\nAnd each whisper sings within me a sleep-\nPersuading melody\u2014but I cannot sleep,\nI cannot die, nevermore to close my eyes\nUpon all that is shadowful and strange,\nFor to Her there is no death, there is no change,\nAnd no more each night do I listen deeply,\nFor I now hear Her, and I hear no sweeter mystery.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Queen of the Night\u201d \u2014 Brief background behind the poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Queen of the Night\u201d, besides being a poem about the night-blooming cereus and nocturnal pollinators (the long-nosed bat and sphinx moth, in particular), was very much inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft\u2019s brilliant Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark<\/em> (1796), hence the epigraph, and also by all the wonderful creatures buzzing about the area where I was living at the time that summer. Each day brought the constant hum of the annual cicada (most around the area had green eyes), while by night my yard was aglow with the \u201cflickering ghost-lights of fireflies\u201d\u2014sometimes at twilight I both heard and saw a particular kind of owl. Strangely enough, Mary Shelley wrote of a similar experience in her notes to Percy\u2019s poetical works, which somewhat influenced the second stanza of my poem:

\u201cBy day, multitudes of ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley’s health and inconstant spirits\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Queen of the Night<\/strong>\n \n\u201cIs not this the witching time of night? The waters murmur, and fall with more than mortal music, and spirits of  peace walk abroad to calm the agitated breast. Eternity is in these moments. Worldly cares melt into the airy stuff  that dreams are made of.\u201d \n\u2014Mary Wollstonecraft\n\nHow enrapturing is the night\nWhose darkness breeds eternity,\nWhose voice of immortality\nSpeaks to me within dreams divine,\nOthering<\/em> me with ecstasies\nOf incorporeal light\n\nA noctilucent glamoury\nLures me to its vespertine life:\nFlickering ghost-lights of fireflies,\nBioluminescent blue ghosts<\/em>\nAlive and luciferous;\nThe green-eyed cicadae, rising\nFrom a grave-like sleep to sing\nIn swarms of unburied crypsis;\nAnd the cooing aziola,\nThe watcher owl, watching\nFor what waits in the fading light\n\nSeduced by night-music, nocturnes\nOf unseen bewitchments, hypnotized\nBy wandering will-o\u2019-wisp light\nAnd its illusions of movement,\nI trace its aerial secrets\nInto the thickening darkness,\nAnd as I creep deeper, deeper\nInto the sylvan night, I find\nA lifeless flower withered white\n\nBut as I watch the moon goddess\nRise sublime, I gaze with wondrous\nMelting eyes as the lifeless flower\nStirs with life, night-sick and alive\nIt blooms beneath the moon\u2019s\nLuminous gaze of lustral light\n\nYet, under the spell of lunacy\u2019s madness,\nNot even the moon can appease\nSuch leafy malevolence\u2014\nA lunar-synthesis of Orphic\nMetamorphosis She exists\nIn other light<\/em> liminality\n\nDiaphanously She dances\nWith Nature\u2019s witchery, scenting\nThe haunted air as Her petals bloom\nWith moon-cancer, a fragrance like\nVanilla orchid touched by\nPhantasmal light, an aphrodisiac\nFor nocturnal pollinators\nThat sleep by day and wake all night:\n\nThe long-nosed bat flittering\nIn fits of nectar ecstasies,\nSkeletal-fingered wings glistening\nIn echoes of light, unfurling\nIts demon-like tongue, numb, dripping\nWith opium on the moon-vine,\nA Dionysian smile thick with pollen\nCatching the moonlight like fairy dust\n\nAnd the worm-tongued sphinx moth,\nWhite-lined, untouched by the death-mark,\nUnclothed by the white-witch ghost\nWhose sole frailty is deathlessness,\nYet possessed by fay-wing\u00e8d night magic\nOf the owlet enchantress black witch,\nSwing-hovering the opening petals\nIn fear of what waits with death\u2019s kiss:\n\nIn illuminated darkness She blooms,\nUnveiling a pale, tendrilled creature\u2014\nOn a single night Her white spider renewed,\nLustrous and twisted in delicious solitude\n\nHow enrapturing is the night\nWhose darkness breeds eternity,\nWhose voice of immortality\nSpeaks to me in dreams divine,\nOthering<\/em> me with ecstasies\nOf incorporeal light,\nAnd as I gaze deeper, deeper,\nAscending into visions sublime,\nI melt away into the darkness\nAnd become one with the night.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy M\u00e9lusine Illusion\u201d \u2014 Brief background behind the poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am including a fragment (five short stanzas) from my long poem \u201cMy M\u00e9lusine Illusion\u201d, which is rather Shelleyan in nature and Coleridgean in spirit<\/em> (see epigraphs to understand that allusion). The piece
itself is a bit mad, to be fair, but beyond the stanzas of somewhat hallucinatory madness, as well as the
literary elements of folklore and legend, it is essentially a metaphysical retelling of the faery M\u00e9lusine\u2019s story written in a more positive light. However, the 4th and 5th stanzas below were directly inspired by
lines 47-67 of Keats\u2019s Lamia<\/em>. The M\u00e9lusine of my poem is still a sort of Keatsian femme fatale<\/em> of
glamourie and spell-craft, but written from a more feminist perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fragment from \u201cMy M\u00e9lusine Illusion\u201d<\/strong>\n\nAscending deeper, deeper\nInto her abysmal deeps,\nBetween the liminality\nOf an Orphean dream\nI see, with other seeing eyes,\nHer visionary unseen \u2014\nStranged by sea-change\nMy eyes open to the sublime,\nDivined, imparadised\nIn visions of luciferous light\n\nAnd there I found Her,\n(Or was it She who found me?<\/em>)\nMy darling faery M\u00e9lusine,\nOnce worshipped as the Faerie Queen\nOr some immortal deity,\nUnlimited, everlasting,\nAn undefined divinity,\nShe was born to find\nHer own eternity\nIn metamorphosis divine\n\nThe daughter of faery Pr\u00e9sine\nAnd the king of Albany,\nShe was never meant to haunt\nThe haunted woods of Coulombiers,\nOr be a whisperer of dark\nLike Mephistophelian lies,\nShe is no unknown tower ghost,\nAlone, forgotten, lost,\nKnown only by its haunting cries\n\nNo, She is no coiling Lamia\nWho warms a mortal soul\nWith silver serpent-scale,\nGlistening amethystine\nWith noctilucent crescents\nOf venomous green, viperine,\nAn emerald-rich arsenic\nCancerous-sick to the kiss,\nRuinous as Castleton bleu<\/em>\nFracturing in mercurial blooms\nThe gilt-golden ormolu,\nBreathing illusion and lies\nUpon those beguiled\nBy snake-charm\u00e9d eyes\n\nNo, She is no snake sorceress,\nShe is no devil of the forest,\nNo seductress water-nymph\nInspiring fits of nympholepsy,\nNo poisonous sea-witch bubbling\nPotions of Circean ecstasy,\nNo illusory fata morgana,\nNo phantom, no shadow,\nNo fairy-tale monster,\nAnd She is no demon-lover\nWho, with wicked arts, charms\nThe artless by enchanted fountains,\nReflecting a Narcissean charm\nIn glamouried waters bleu-jaune<\/em>,\nIllusioned upon magic lands\nOf faery castle Lusignan<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGhosts of 1816\u201d \u2014 Brief background behind the poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was hesitant to include this poem for it was written years ago and I no longer write in this more formalized, rhyming structure; however, the piece was indeed inspired by that \u201chaunted summer\u201d of 1816, and it certainly goes with one interpretation of your theme \u201cin the wild\u201d since a part of it was written at Villa Diodati (on the publicly accessible grassy knoll next to it, that is) during my Frankenstein<\/em>-inspired travels of 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ghosts of 1816 <\/strong>\n\n\u201cMy imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me...I saw the hideous phantasm...and I wished to exchange  this ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around...the dark parquet...the moonlight struggling through, and  the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous  phantom; still it haunted me.\u201d \u2014Mary Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein<\/em> (1831 edition)\n\nDeathlike beneath the cold ray of the moon\nBathing in its sinful silver-white shine;\nEnshadowed in the distance as my gloom-\nTeased eyes glean over one last sanguine line,\nReading by moonlight in wickedness divine.\nTeeming now with thoughts that God may impugn,\nI pour the perfumed peridot,\nAnd set imagination loose\nIn the opalescent louche,\nRaising the unhallowed arts in poetic woe.\n\nThe sky told a story that haunted me\nAs the galvanized air lit up with light;\nIt was a tempest meant so fittingly\nTo raise Death\u2019s shadowy forms of delight.\nAnd yet who could say that this dreary night\nDid not console the ghost-gleamed literati?\nThe livid hues and shades of death\nInspired the spark of creation,\nInfusing life with re-animation\nTo thick my lab-maddened blood with its stifled breath.\n\nMy dark imagination murmurs in\nSubtle numbness, a drowsy sense among\nSour smells writhed in softened yellow-grey skin\nAs moaning escaped its mold-flowered tongue\u2014\nTo the galvanometer I now clung,\nWatching its death-plucked eyes and wrinkled grin.\nThe drops of the ice-cold drip\nReleases the ethereal spirits,\nCreating dew-frosted ringlets\nFrom a pontarlier I now lovingly sip.\n\nAs I drink I think of Ariel sails,\nSleepless gossamers toward my blonde-haired harlot;\nHer cerulean blue eyes bring back tales\nOf her sinister-sweet lips, dark scarlet,\nMade for the tear-soaked attic of my Gothic Charlotte.\nThe poetry of swirling herbal trails\nPresage my dark seduction:\nThe green anise that did benumb\nMy tongue as a bitter drop of laudanum\nBrought forth my faery-borne glitter-eyed abduction.\n\nSuddenly, in a conscious memory,\nSolemn, serene, in mysteriousness\nI gazed upon the ice of Chamonix;\nCheating despair in moonless wilderness,\nMusing and anxious in the calm darkness\nUpon the peak in awful majesty.\nDiscovering undiscovered solitudes\nOn this wind-swept edge\u2014one more step, never,\nYet I wished to fall, and fall forever\nThrough swift vapors in Nature\u2019s breathless altitudes.\n\nDark vibrant colors begin to take me,\nJade and emerald gems, light golden hues,\nFragrant oils released, death-white and ghostly,\nWith blood reds, Veronese greens and lush blues\u2014\nAn aesthetic paleness in herbal dews\nStirs the madness in chilling melody.\nThe licorice sweetness I crave\nOf delirium and nightmares,\nBeckoning for other-worldly cares\nFrom the enviable qualities of the grave.\n\nThis elixir of life brings back my ghosts\nTo roam freely in imagination;\nVisions of the spectre-barked dead that toasts\nTo solemn delights of putrefaction\nAs breasts with eyes watch with satisfaction.\nBitter wormwood, its herbaceous taste boasts\nOf what its poison does to a sweet face,\nTwisting in Nature\u2019s poetic madness,\nBrooding over Her loveliness\nThat the sallow effects of Death will one day grace.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Links to longer poems \/ Conclusion<\/strong>

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Fires of Ecstasy at Samhuinn\u201d <\/a>
The piece was inspired by Edinburgh\u2019s Samhuinn Fire Festival that took place atop Calton Hill on 31 October 2018, which, of course, also happened to have been Keats\u2019s birthday (his writing was in mind during the composition). Besides certain imagery taken \u201cin the wild\u201d during the ceremony, the poem has a more mythological influence. I am also attaching the illustration to the email, which represents the metamorphosis of the goddess Br\u00ecghde (associated with spring) into the blue-skinned Cailleach (from Old Irish Caillech, \u201cveiled one\u201d), also known in Scotland as Beira, Queen of Winter \u2014 this metamorphosis is essentially the very essence of the poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Hecatean Ides; or, The Dark Spirit of Shelleyan Solitude\u201d<\/a>
This piece is a bit complicated and perhaps overly esoteric, so I won\u2019t go into obscure detail \u2014 I\u2019ve
already written you quite an eyesore of background notes as it is (my apologies for that). I will only add
that it was heavily influenced by Shelley (Laon and Cythna<\/em>, Alastor<\/em> and Prometheus Unbound<\/em>, most
especially), as well as the mythology of Diana of Nemi, and, oddly enough, my wanderings at Castle
Howard in Yorkshire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks for joining us once again for another Romantic Poets in the Wild. It’s poetry month now (cruelest month, Wordsworth’s birthday, et cetera) so we hope you’re out there reading, writing, and thinking about poems. Join us next time for the photography of Will Sherwood! (and maybe a surprise or two along the way)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clay Franklin Johnson is the author of A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems (Gothic Keats Press, 2021). His collection\u2019s eponymous poem was presented at \u201cIll met by moonlight\u201d: Gothic… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[111,117],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5941,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions\/5941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}