06 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth

 Goodness, is it time for another Tennyson poem? I believe it is!

Today's story is The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and the poem I have selected to represent it is The Kraken by this blog's poetry MVP, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Shall we release it?

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumbered and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

More about the imagery than anything else.  The grandeur, mystery, and terrible beauty of a deep-sea leviathan that slumbers beneath the world, ancient, unknowable, and sublime.

Also, I can never remember the name of the story, which led to an exchange in an earlier poetry month that still makes me chuckle.

Original Post: 

The doors of his mouth,

The lamps of his face, Moby

Dick set on Venus

Comment: 

The doors of his face

The lamps of his mouth, and not

the title Josh wrote!

My response:

The doors of his face
The lamps of his mouth! There, I
corrected it, Chris!