Old garden of grayish and ochre lichen, How long a time since the brown people who have vanished from here Built fires beside you and nestled by you Out of the ranging seawind? A hundred years, two hundred, You have been dissevered from humanity And only known the stubble squirrels and the headland rabbits, Or the long-fetlocked plow horses Breaking the hilltop in December, sea-gulls following, Screaming in the black furrow; no one Touches you with love, the gray hawk and the red hawk touched you Where now my hand lies. So I have brought you Wine and white milk and honey for the hundred years of famine And the hundred cold ages of seawind. I did not dream the taste of wine could bind with granite, Nor honey and milk please you; but sweetly They mingle down the storm-worn cracks among the mosses, Interpenetrating the silent Wing-prints of ancient weathers long at peace, and the older Scars of primal fire, and the stone Endurance that is waiting millions of years to carry A corner of the house, this also destined. Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you The wings of the future, for I have them. How dear you will be to me when I too grow old, old comrade. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT HAWTHORNE'S GRAVE by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES THE STILL HOUR by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN SONG OF THE OPEN LAND by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON WAR NOTES: 1. 'EXTRAS' by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON JULIA by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE LOOKING DEATH IN THE FACE by DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK |