WEARILY stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland; Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, "%%", Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labor and strife; No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me -- What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them; Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper. Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry. Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed; Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. Just is the wave which uptore us; 't is Nature's own law which condemns us; Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand! Joy to the oak of the mountain: he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts; Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NOONTIDE REST by ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM SINCERITIES by WILLIAM ROSE BENET THE FOUR ZOAS: NIGHTS THE FIRST AND SECOND by WILLIAM BLAKE INACCESSIBILITY IN THE BATTLEFIELD by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE HUMAN TOUCH by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON VERSES ON CLERGY PREACHING POLITICS by JOHN BYROM |