Classic and Contemporary Poetry
HIGH NOON AT MIDSUMMER ON THE CAMPAGNA, by WILLIAM SHARP Poet's Biography First Line: High noon Last Line: Of noon. Alternate Author Name(s): Macleod, Fiona Subject(s): Graves; Night; Rome, Italy; Time; Tombs; Tombstones; Bedtime | ||||||||
High noon; And from the purple-veiled hills To where Rome lies in azure mist; Scarce any breath of wind Upon this vast and solitary waste, These leagues of sunscorch'd grass Where i' the dawn the scrambling goats maintain A hardy feast; And where, when the warm yellow moonlight floods the flats, Gaunt laggard sheep browse spectrally for hours While not less gaunt and spectral shepherds stand Brooding, or with hollow vacant eyes Stare down the long perspectives of the dusk. Now not a breath: No sound; No living thing, Save where the beetle jars his crackling shards, Or where the hoarse cicala fills The heavy heated hour with palpitant whirr. Yet hark! Comes not a low deep whisper from the ground, A sigh as though the immemorial past Breathed here a long, slow, breath? Hush'd nations sleep below; lost empires here Are dust; and deeper still, Dim shadowy peoples are the mould that warms The roots of every flower that blooms and blows: Even as we, too, bloom and fade, Who are so fain To be as the Night that dies not, but forever Weaves her immortal web of starry fires; To be as Time itself, Time, whose vast holocausts Lie here, deep buried from the ken of men, Here, where no breath of wind Ruffles the brooding heat, The breathless blazing heat Of Noon. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BREATH OF NIGHT by RANDALL JARRELL HOODED NIGHT by ROBINSON JEFFERS NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP by ROBINSON JEFFERS WORKING OUTSIDE AT NIGHT by DENIS JOHNSON POEM TO TAKE BACK THE NIGHT by JUNE JORDAN COOL DARK ODE by DONALD JUSTICE POEM TO BE READ AT 3 A.M by DONALD JUSTICE |
|