The Gong

Love hums in your veins with the deep and heartening sound
Of a temple gong—
The gong of Dai Nippon
That fused into perfect, fastidious harmony
When a girl had flung into the quag of its white-hot metal
Her rhythm of passionate life.

In the dead hours of the day
When men doubt themselves,
When the acrid sunlight appraises them and finds them without due significance,
You touch for your reassurance
The gong!
And its soft-toned thunder, musical, purple, true as earth’s center—
Dignity, power, conviction—
Imposes its harmony:
One may believe in oneself without insulting intelligence,
Life may be full of distinction, or ordered beauty—and magic—
And you are the master!

The rhythm of blood and spirit run true.
When has she failed you?
When withheld immolation
In the fiery quicksand?

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The Gong” appeared in Beatrice Ravenel’s collection The Arrow of Lightning (Harold Vinal, 1926). In April 1927, The Sewanee Review (Vol. 35, No. 2) published a critique of The Arrow of Lightning by psalm author and composer Sidney E. Cox who wrote, “[Beatrice Ravenel] makes us hear the mocking-bird […] the assurances and quiet gusto of a man who knows the trees and plants and fish and birds and turtles. She is mistress of the music of inflections, of pulses, of enthusiasms, and of ironic chuckles. The sounds of her lines imply moods, qualities, and essences. They shift and vary, lift up and subside. If the reader follows with pliant imagination his voice will be guided into intricate patterns of sympathetic sound. […] The analogies and similitudes she sees are nearly all unprecedented. The pleasure from her poems is all adventure, not agreeable habit. In short, Miss Ravenel is original.”