Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A YAWN, by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A YAWN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I grow so weary; is it death?
Last Line: They live and die and so pass by.
Alternate Author Name(s): Alleyne, Ellen; Rossetti, Christina
Subject(s): Arks; Death; Earth; Sea; Dead, The; World; Ocean


I grow so weary: is it death
This awful woful weariness?
It is a weight to heave my breath,
A weight to wake, a weight to sleep;
I have no heart to work or weep.

The sunshine teazes and the dark;
Only the twilight dulls my grief:
Is this the Ark, the strong safe Ark,
Or the tempestuous drowning sea
Whose crested coursers foam for me?

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from Heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore:
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Salt passionless anemones
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and propagate and thrive.

Shells quaint with curve or spot or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike yet all unlike,
Are born without a pang and die
Without a pang and so pass by.

I would I lived without a pang:
Oh happy they who day by day
Quiescent neither sobbed nor sang;
Unburdened with a what or why
They live and die and so pass by.





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