Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON THE DUNES, by VICTOR MARIE HUGO Poet's Biography First Line: Now that my tasks are done, and fast Last Line: Blue-flowered on the sandy spurs. Subject(s): Death; Dunes; Dead, The | ||||||||
NOW that my tasks are done, and fast Life dwindles like a torch's glow, Now that I seek the grave, down-cast By weight of years and weight of woe; Now that belovéd things gone by Fade from my sight as though drawn in By some dark whirlpool of the sky On summits once I yearned to win. Now that I say, "We yet shall soar, The lie that shall stand revealed with dawn!" I am sad, and wander on the shore Like one into his dream withdrawn. Beyond the sandhills without pause I watch unending breakers play, Cloud-flocks that fly the vulture claws Of wind that seeks a fleecy prey; The roaring tide, the humming air I hear, and sound of swathe and scythe, And in my musing mind compare The weary voices and the blithe; And often prone along some dune I lie where scant the grass is sown, Until I see the dazéd moon With her foreboding eyes look down. Athwart the gulf of darkened space She mounts and sheds a light of dreams, And each stares in the other's face The man that weeps, the moon that beams. Where now are fled the days that waned? Are all who erst have known me dead? And are my dazzled eyeballs drained Of all the light that youth once shed? Is all gone by? Forlorn and frail, My voice unanswered dies away. O winds! O waves! And must I fail Like gusty wind or driven spray? Shall all I loved be lost to sight? Within my soul there falls the gloom. O Earth whose peaks are veiled in night, Am I the ghost, and thou the tomb? Are life, love, joy and hope all spent? I wait, I ask, I still implore. And all my urns are earthward bent To find one drop still left to pour. How nigh remorse is memory! How everything with tears is rife! O Death, how cruel cold thy key Within the wards of human life! Yet louder than the wind that drives The endless billows, my thought stirs: Summer is come, the thistle thrives Blue-flowered on the sandy spurs. | 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 A COUP D'ETAT; AN INCIDENT IN THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 4, 1851 by VICTOR MARIE HUGO |
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