DRUMS, you are too tame, And reach not to the heart's heroic roots; Nor you, accusing flutes, Wailing an elegy of wasted life's Soon shuttered breath; Nor you, thin skeleton strings that plead with Death, Drawing your sweetness from unearthly fields Where silence yields Her ear to sadness deeper than Any that's heard in man's farewell to fugitive man. Too tame are drums and strings, Too shrill the funeral and fitful fifes. It is you, Loud trumpets, you That break the ice-sealed springs; Whose lifted clangour For ever unsubdued Awakes rebellion against Time's servitude. The unmanning flutes, The nervous, ghostly drums, The strings that spread a subtle shaking snare, Are all too tame. Like the Sun's herald blaring his bronze notes, Or Eastern Attila sweeping on the West With myriad thundering throats, Or proud Atlantic ship bringing swift day To slavish shores and continents of night— The trumpets' lifted clangour Upheaves the light, Unseals the primal blood, the lust and anger, And slips that ancient hound, the Flesh—and hark! The echoing bark, The near, reiterated reply, The hound's deep, hoarse, harsh cry. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING WHEN THE KYE CAME HOME by JAMES HOGG KILLED AT THE FORD by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MONT BLANC; LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY BLOUDIE JACKE OF SHREWSBERRIE; THE SHROPSHIRE BLUEBEARD by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM |