Description of Elysium by James Agee: the poem and Analysis

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The poem 

There: far, friends: ours: dear dominion:

Whole health resides with peace,

Gladness and never harm,

There not time turning,

Nor fear of flower of snow

Where marbling water slides

No charm may halt of chill,

Air aisling the open acres,

And all the gracious trees

Spout up their standing fountains

Of wind-beloved green

And the blue conclaved mountains

Are grave guards

Stone and springing field

Wide one tenderness,

The unalterable hour

Smiles deathlessness:

No thing is there thinks:

Mind the witherer

Withers on the outward air:

We can not come there.

Sure on this shining night

Of starmade shadows round,

Kindness must watch for me

This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.

All is healed, all is health.

High summer holds the earth.

Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wandering far alone

Of shadows on the stars.

Now thorn bone bare

Silenced with iron the branch's gullet:

Rattling merely on the air

Of hornleaved holly:

The stony mark where sand was by 

The water of a naild foot:

The berry harder than the beak:

The hole beneath the dead oak root:

All now brought quiet

Through the latest throe

Quieted and ready and quiet:

Still not snow:

Still thorn bone hare

Iron in the silenced gully

Rattling only of the air

Through hornleaved holly.

Analysis 

James Agee's "Description of Elysium" is a poem that captures the essence of a tranquil, paradisiacal realm. It paints a picture of a place where peace, health, and joy abound, contrasting sharply with the troubles and impermanence of the earthly world. The poem's imagery is vivid and evocative, using nature as a metaphor for a timeless, idyllic existence.

Agee's language is lyrical and poetic, drawing the reader into a world of marbling waters, wind-beloved trees, and blue mountains. The poem suggests that in Elysium, there is no fear, no time, and no decay. It is a place where the mind itself withers away, leaving only a state of pure being.

Overall, "Description of Elysium" is a contemplative poem that explores themes of transcendence, mortality, and the human longing for a perfect, eternal existence. Agee's use of imagery and language creates a sense of wonder and longing, inviting the read

er to imagine a world beyond the constraints of time and mortality.