Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BROKEN CIRCLE, by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I stood on sarum's treeless plain Last Line: Still lives to feed its altar-flame! Subject(s): Stonehenge | ||||||||
I STOOD on Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. Upheaved in many a billowy mound The sea-like, naked turf arose, Where wandering flocks went nibbling round The mingled graves of friends and foes. The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, This windy desert roamed in turn; Unmoved these mighty blocks remain Whose story none that lives may learn. Erect, half buried, slant or prone, These awful listeners, blind and dumb, Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown, As wave on wave they go and come. "Who are you, giants, whence and why?" I stand and ask in blank amaze; My soul accepts their mute reply: "A mystery, as are you that gaze. "A silent Orpheus wrought the charm From riven rocks their spoils to bring; A nameless Titan lent his arm To range us in our magic ring. "But Time with still and stealthy stride, That climbs and treads and levels all, That bids the loosening keystone slide, And topples down the crumbling wall, -- "Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod. "No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few." My thoughts had wandered far away, Borne off on Memory's outspread wing, To where in deepening twilight lay The wrecks of friendship's broken ring. Ah me! of all our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must lean, and that must fall? Cold is the Druid's altar-stone, Its vanished flame no more returns; But ours no chilling damp has known, -- Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns. So let our broken circle stand A wreck, a remnant, yet the same, While one last, loving, faithful hand Still lives to feed its altar-flame! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FESTAL HOUR by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS GUILT AND SORROW by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH HEART'S JOURNEY, SELS. by SIEGFRIED SASSOON SONNET: 4: WRITTEN AT STONEHENGE by THOMAS WARTON THE YOUNGER A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY [DECEMBER 16, 1773] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A SEA DIALOGUE by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A SUN-DAY HYMN [OR LAMENT] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES BILL AND JOE by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES |
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