Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE NAMELESS DOON [OR, RUIN], by WILLIAM LARMINIE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NAMELESS DOON [OR, RUIN], by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who were the builders? Question not the silence
Last Line: No faintest sigh of story lisps the wave.
Subject(s): Ruins


WHO were the builders? Question not the silence
That settles on the lake for evermore,
Save when the sea-bird screams and to the islands
The echo answers from the steep-cliffed shore.
O half-remaining ruin, in the lore
Of human life a gap shall all deplore
Beholding thee; since thou art like the dead
Found slain, no token to reveal the why,
The name, the story. Some one murdered
We know, we guess; and gazing upon thee,
And, filled by thy long silence of reply,
We guess some garnered sheaf of tragedy; --
Of tribe or nation slain so utterly
That even their ghosts are dead, and on their grave
Springeth no bloom of legend in its wildness;
And age by age weak washing round the islands
No faintest sigh of story lisps the wave.





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