Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CONSTANCY, by JOHN DRINKWATER Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The shadows that companion me Last Line: Walk in immortal fields of earth. Subject(s): Death; Mortality; Dead, The | ||||||||
THE shadows that companion me From chronicles and poetry More constant and substantial are Than these my men familiar, Who draw with me uncertain breath A little while this side of death; For you, my friend, may fail to keep To-morrow's tryst, so darkly deep The motions mutable that give To flesh its brief prerogative, And in the pleasant hours we make Together for devotion's sake, Always the testament I see That is our twin mortality. But those from the recorded page Keep an eternal pilgrimage. They stedfastly inhabit here With no mortality to fear, And my communion with them Ails not in the mind's stratagem Against the sudden blow, the date That once must fall unfortunate. They fret not nor persuade, and when These graduates I entertain, I grieve not that I too must fall As you, my friend, to funeral, But rather find example there That, when my boughs of time are bare, And nothing more the body's chance Governs my careful circumstance, I shall, upon that later birth, Walk in immortal fields of earth. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND |
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