Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE, by BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE, by                    
First Line: They found him asleep in the oaken shade
Last Line: What mother's child had come home to rest.
Subject(s): Death; Life; Dead, The


They found him asleep in the oaken shade
With the homely toys that his daddy made:
His soldiers were standing in battle array
By the hobbyhorse that he rode that day
To mill and to market, and very far,
Where ogres and goblins and giants are,
And to mines of gold in a country new,
Where none but himself and the brownies knew.
'Twas a mother that kissed him and took him to rest,
To follow his dreams on his mother's breast.

He grew to a man and he rode again,
His bobbies along the ways of men:
He rode to the mills that grind and try
The souls of men for the world to buy:
With a royal will to win the fray,
He drove the ogres and goblins away:
He met the giants, and some he slew
At the mines of gold in the country new:
He braved the world in a manly way,
And he only drew for a valiant play.

In many a tilt he has won renown:
Full many a foe he has beaten down:
But his temples now are growing gray,
And he thinks of mother so far away,
Who smoothed his brow in those tender years
And kissed away his hurts and fears:
Weary at last of toil and strife,
He dreams again of his early life,
And yearns anew for the oaken shade
Where he played with the toys that his daddy made.

They dimly saw by the early light,
A form that had come in the silent night
And fallen asleep by the oaken tree
Where the weary spirit had longed to be:
The mother that kissed him had gone away,
And the oaken tree was in decay:
They were strangers now who came to see,
And none could tell what his name could be:
So, they buried him there; but they never guessed
What mother's child had come home to rest.





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