Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GREAT BLASKET by JOHN FREEMAN

First Line: LONE, LONE / ON TOSSING SEAS
Last Line: STORM EVERLASTING.
Subject(s): MEMORY; SOLITUDE; LONELINESS;
LONE, lone
On tossing seas,
Under the hoar and seamèd cliff
And wintry trees
That from the cliff's height vex the cloud
With vain imploring.
Lone, lone
On the violent seas.

This solitary
Tide-tormented,
This wind-harried hollow rock
Where nothing grows
But weeds and lank trees of late bud,
This stony island
Of all forsaken save wing, wind and flood
Long ago. ...

There is no sea
Bright, gay,
But washes night and day, night and day,
A lonely
Isle where no change is nor forgetting,
But memory
Of what long since, long since has been
And will be never again.

The senses' waves
Storm up unresting,
Many-winged, many-tongued desires
Throng clamouring,
And nothing grows;
Comes no bird nesting.
But the loud winds and fierce waves
Storm everlasting.



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