HERE on the sunnier scarp of the hill let us rest, And hoard the hastening hour, Find a mercy unexpressed In the chance wild flower We may find on the pathway side, or the glintering flint, Or other things so small and unregarded: Descry far windows fired with the sun, to whom Nothing is small or mean. To us, let the war be a leering ghost now shriven, And as though it had never been; A tragedy mask discarded. A lamp in a tomb. What though in the hounded east, now we are gone, The thunder-throated cannonade boom on? Too long we have striven, Too soon we return. The white stone roads go valleyward from the height, Like our hopes, to be lost in haze Where the bonfires burn With the dross of summer days -- (Our summer hideous, harvesting affright). Ah, see the silver Spirit dream among his quiet dells, Hear the slow slumbrous bells, The voices of a world long by, Come dim and clear and dim As the wheat-leys sleep or sigh. Fall into musings thence, let Psyche stray Where she lists, Among small things of little account, Or through the coloured mists; -- Myriad the roads to the visionary mount, And the white forehead of the Mystery. But alas, she falls in a swoon, Pale-lipped like a withering moon; So terrible is the insistency Of the east where like a fiend automaton The thunder-throated cannonade booms on. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NICHOLAS NYE by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE THE FIRST AIR-RAID WARNING by EVELYN D. BANGAY PHANTOMS IN GREEN by STANLEY KILNER BOOTH ON AN INFANT UNBORN, AND THE MOTHER DYING IN TRAVAIL by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |