Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE EEGRASS, by WILLIAM BARNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE EEGRASS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: With stricken heart, and melting mood
Last Line: But this bright-bladed eegrass.
Subject(s): Grief; Loss; Memory; Sorrow; Sadness


With stricken heart, and melting mood,
I rov'd along the mead to brood
In freedom, at the eventide,
On souls that time has scatter'd wide;
As by the boughy hedge's side
The shadows darken'd into night,
And cooling airs, with wanton flight,
Were blowing o'er the eegrass.

There fancy roam'd from place to place,
From year to year, to find some face
That I no more shall look upon,
Or see in sadness, sorrow-wan,
Or time-worn with its brightness gone;
And my own Lucy, fair to see,
Seem'd there to come again to me,
Up o'er the shining eegrass.

As when upon a summer's day,
While we were there at hawling hay,
With downcast look she lightly drew
Her rake-head to her shapely shoe,
With hands well skill'd to bring it through
The tangled crowfoot-stems, that broke
The rakes for us poor clumsy folk,
And still are in the eegrass.

And there the storms that spring clouds shed
Fell lately on her hooded head,
The while she sat, at eventide,
A-milking by her dun cow's side;
And there, when summer, sunny-skied
And boughy-wooded, brought its heat,
She trod the flow'rs with light-shod feet,
But comes not o'er the eegrass.

O summer all thy crops are down,
And copse and leaze are turning brown,
And cuckoos leave the boughs to fade
Through waning fall, within the glade;
And we have lost our blooming maid.
So all thou broughtest fresh and fair
Begins to wither ev'ry where,
But this bright-bladed eegrass.





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